Mr Football beta test

[TKYC]

With Toby and Carrben... Something amiss with the game and needs correcting. I'm hooked, but not enjoying most recent games.
Hate to sound negative about MrFootball... Generally great, let down by a few small points.

[SydneyRox]

The last two seasons I have finished have now finished a little short.

Same as the issue last time, I clicked to play the grand final and it came up that I had already played, no details.

More annoying is that I lost both times..... and missed the extra trophies that come with playing the final

Oh and I am stuck again Monty, as it hasnt progressed to the post season stuff.

[Boomz]

Still stuck at the finals :(

[m0nty]

I have fixed a bunch of you who were stuck at finals.

[mollyfud]

I have fixed a bunch of you who were stuck at finals.

I am no longer stuck, but list page doesn't give an option for a game either

[m0nty]

I have fixed a bunch of you who were stuck at finals.

I am no longer stuck, but list page doesn't give an option for a game either

That's because you're at the review stage. Go to the Assistants page.

[carrben12]

The Carringbush are very strong.  Obviously we should all be tqking a look at their players and basing our list off their thing.  I notice Swan has at least one +5 midfielder skills.  My players do not because I've as yet been too tight to shell out on the specialist coaches required for that.  Swan racked up 221 dt points against my team back in the early days.

m0nty, what level mid-game rehab coaches do the robot teams have?  Also, how did you generate them?  I'm assuming you didn't rate each skill of each player.

[m0nty]

The Carringbush are very strong.  Obviously we should all be tqking a look at their players and basing our list off their thing.  I notice Swan has at least one +5 midfielder skills.  My players do not because I've as yet been too tight to shell out on the specialist coaches required for that.  Swan racked up 221 dt points against my team back in the early days.

m0nty, what level mid-game rehab coaches do the robot teams have?  Also, how did you generate them?  I'm assuming you didn't rate each skill of each player.

The robot teams have +4 coaches across the board. :)

I haven't finished balancing them, either. The mid-level teams will get stronger.

[m0nty]

I'm sure some of this has been said before, but I don't have the fortitude to plow through 33 pages of posts so I apologise if I double up.  Also, as this list goes on it gets more and more scope-creepy, and I imagine you've had many of these ideas yourself but not had time to implement them:

Firstly, this is great.  I can't recall how hooked I was when I discovered the footy fanatic game 6 years ago, but I'm pretty sure this beta beats that.

The 2nd draft is useless.  My only use for that guy is to put him as my unused emgy to bring down my team value, then delist the guy at the end of the year to make room for the next schlepper I'm forced to pick up.

Thanks Ben. I agree that the draft needs a bit of work. The quality of players in the rookie draft must improve, and it should be optional.

I think training up players' skills should only occur between seasons, though if you introduce a ticket system which limits how many matches you can play I suppose training could be a nice thing to play with while your team is waiting.

I think people would get antsy if they couldn't upgrade during a season. With good reason too, it's not fun.

It is hard to get a feel for the real challenges that selection will pose when I have to play my worst 22 all the time to not lose my fan base.  I understand that won't be in an issue in the real game, but it is hard to test out what I think would be the most enjoyable part of the game.

I've played around with the recruiting coach, and it seems fairly underpowered.  The best draftee appeared in a season when I took max penalty on that role.  I'm guessing you haven't fat-fingered a negative sign, in which case the incremental benefit seems too small.

The recruitment coach is buggy at the moment.

I don't like having full clarity on draftee stats.  I think showing a range for each skill rather than the exact attributes would be more exciting and realistic.  recruiting coach could give more visibility into the right value of player traits.

I love the text description flow of the game.  There are obviously a few glitches there, but overall it paints a great picture.  If it would be very helpful I can keep track of weird jumps in the narrative and post them here.  I have an image in my head of my team's first victory over the Ranga beards as if I were at the game.  It was a miserable wet day, and the Musk oxen came back from two goals down kicking into the wind in the final qtr to snatch victory by a point.

In terms of realism, I think it's suitable that all attributes and skills are known in advance, as with the draft combine and whatnot, these things are known in real footy before drafts. Yes, I know there are a few glitches in the text commentary. That's a late stage bug fix.

It may be that I tend to draft too many players with -2 technique and not fix it til much later, but I've had seasons with about 20% accuracy that seems quite unrealistic.  Game after game of 2.12, 3.11, 2.16 etc.  Has anyone else noticed that?

Technique and Snap are very important skills for forwards. Neglecting them will mean inaccurate kicking for goal.

My team seems unrealistically healthy.  I chose Launceston as my home for that reason, but I've never been missing more than 4 players.  I can't remember the last time the Dees ever had such a short injury list.  I guess LTIs are coming?  Perhaps there should also be training injuries, and you can spend money on another coaching role to reduce those.

I did include LTIs, though come to think of it I haven't experienced one either. Should go back and look at that. I purposely made injuries less prevalent and shorter-lasting than reality, because having a team smashed by bad luck with injury is not very fun (plus your opponents are always healthy). Training injuries is an interesting idea, though. There is also a concept from Blood Bowl called "niggles", which require a dice roll for aged players to see if they get up for the game each week when they have a chronic injury. I haven't introduced that yet and probably won't for launch, but it may make it into a future update.

Sometimes if I sub a player into my team, other positions shift around unexpectedly.  Why is that?

I haven't experienced that myself. I'll look out for it.

I think the old-age penalties should be more unpredictable.  Some players should age more gracefully than others. Possibly related to number of game played?

There's a whole raft of possibilities there, especially for issues like "going cold" when you haven't played seniors for a while as an experienced veteran, or a player acting up midweek when they have been dropped, that sort of psychological thing. That might be saved for a future update too.

Anyway, thanks again m0nty and I look forward to seeing this game develop.

No problem! I love long analysis posts like this, keep them coming.

[SydneyRox]

Sometimes if I sub a player into my team, other positions shift around unexpectedly.  Why is that?

I haven't experienced that myself. I'll look out for it.

From my experience it will be due to Key Positions vs normal  (KF vs F or KB vs B)

For example, I was loading my worst 22 and for some reason it didnt populate a CHF, however when I swapped the RHF (Who was a KF) to a normal forward, the computer naturally populated the KF into the CHF positions for me.

[crog100]

Firstly, hats off, great effort, I think it’s a really solid game.  A friend and I started a similar project but got lazy when it came to coding.

Have only ran into a few minor bugs which have been mentioned already.

I’m nearing the end of season 7, so far only managed a pole-axing from Collingwood in the GF. I’ve not really had the fan issue others have had, I’ve pretty much had a steady increase.

Below are some of my musings/observations not in any logical order! Some have probably been covered already (I think it’s good as is btw):

- MVP award being slightly weighted based on stats (eg: say half a point added to the roll per 3 goals or 15 pos etc). The sub on a team that lost by over 10 goals getting the MVP seems slightly off the mark.

- Best and Fairest award at the end of a season, could award brownlow votes for matches and award potential when you get x number of votes, but I think there is enough potential points going around already.

- On the potential point, the seconds assistant maxed out may be OP, my star players get more potential when rested in the seconds than in the firsts. Perhaps a salary limit or seasons played limit on players getting awarded these seconds points.  Also found that the couple of players that are never used accumulating a lot of these points so perhaps that balances it out a little.

- At the delisting point, it would be nice to see the old guys stat drops before you decide whether to keep them, I had a player who was quite good but had low EN, I kept him and his EN was reduced to 0 in the preseason, I was then stuck with him. It also seems hard to rebuild, I can’t clean out enough players to bring more kids in, and there is usually only 1 worthwhile draft option in drafting stages anyway.

- The commentary is great but you could have some fun with varied commentary lines/injuries (to save you doing it, perhaps you could run a comp where you award tickets for good commentary submissions or something like that)

For the stat heads (none of this adds much to the actual game, just the overall experience):
- Trophy progression for each player on their page
- Career stats on the player page with season splits and stat averages
- Not sure if you track TOG stats but that would be nice
- Sortable stats on the season page with all players stat totals and averages (could add per min averages with TOG too)
- History tab with past season performances, store Retired players or HOF maybe based on say 150 games played
- Best single game performances for your club â€" most goals in a game, most DT points in a game, most tackles etc etc

- Looking at my team, the players are all looking very similar â€" C and KF with pretty much the same stat line.  I’m thinking of restarting and trying to make very role specific players and see how that plays out, at the moment I always gravitate to making balanced players with the same stats, in the end though when the player reaches $700k+ the stats are all pretty much in the 7-10 range.

- The dual position players particularly the c/f/b seem to be too far behind a single position player that I’ve found they are of little use later in the game. They have too many negative skills to get rid of.  I had thoughts about making a c with b skills as a tagging type, but just didn’t work.  The exception to me is the R/KF, I’ve found they can be specialised ok in my experience.

- On the accuracy topic â€" I tried to make a small forward who has 11 snap and 10 crumb â€" he went 1.8 and for the season is 5.21, it’s possible he’s just taking set shots which he is 7 but I expected a bit more out of him.

- I looked at having a low ST/weight/-tall (speedy outside player), but I don’t see any advantage to having low stats in these areas, perhaps there should be small advantage to QK/DA if the other stats are below a certain point.

- Some other cosmetics, random cartoon face generator would be cool, jumper colours, team mascot pics etc

I think I wrote too much, sorry about the book...keep up the great work!

Cheers

[m0nty]

Firstly, hats off, great effort, I think it’s a really solid game.  A friend and I started a similar project but got lazy when it came to coding.

Have only ran into a few minor bugs which have been mentioned already.

I’m nearing the end of season 7, so far only managed a pole-axing from Collingwood in the GF. I’ve not really had the fan issue others have had, I’ve pretty much had a steady increase.

Below are some of my musings/observations not in any logical order! Some have probably been covered already (I think it’s good as is btw):

- MVP award being slightly weighted based on stats (eg: say half a point added to the roll per 3 goals or 15 pos etc). The sub on a team that lost by over 10 goals getting the MVP seems slightly off the mark.

That is intentional. The MVP skill point that you get in Blood Bowl, which this element is based off, is completely random. The MVP in Mr Football is slightly less random, but I wanted to maintain that random factor so that there is some chance involved.

- Best and Fairest award at the end of a season, could award brownlow votes for matches and award potential when you get x number of votes, but I think there is enough potential points going around already.

That is something I think would be suitable for private leagues, but for the open division it is too much, agreed.

- On the potential point, the seconds assistant maxed out may be OP, my star players get more potential when rested in the seconds than in the firsts. Perhaps a salary limit or seasons played limit on players getting awarded these seconds points.  Also found that the couple of players that are never used accumulating a lot of these points so perhaps that balances it out a little.

I am thinking of dialling back the seconds Potential points, to a max of 2 per week with a +3 assistant. There is already a rule in place that these points only accrue to players with a season total of 4 + your seconds assistant bonus. Salary limit is a good idea too, I suppose, I'll look at that.

- At the delisting point, it would be nice to see the old guys stat drops before you decide whether to keep them, I had a player who was quite good but had low EN, I kept him and his EN was reduced to 0 in the preseason, I was then stuck with him. It also seems hard to rebuild, I can’t clean out enough players to bring more kids in, and there is usually only 1 worthwhile draft option in drafting stages anyway.

At the moment I only force retirements after the 14th season. I think I am going to change that so that whenever one of a player's attributes is about to drop below 2, he retires.

- The commentary is great but you could have some fun with varied commentary lines/injuries (to save you doing it, perhaps you could run a comp where you award tickets for good commentary submissions or something like that)

I have that system set up already in my code, it's just that I only have one entry for each event outcome. That is one of the last jobs I will do.

For the stat heads (none of this adds much to the actual game, just the overall experience):
- Trophy progression for each player on their page
- Career stats on the player page with season splits and stat averages
- Not sure if you track TOG stats but that would be nice
- Sortable stats on the season page with all players stat totals and averages (could add per min averages with TOG too)
- History tab with past season performances, store Retired players or HOF maybe based on say 150 games played
- Best single game performances for your club â€" most goals in a game, most DT points in a game, most tackles etc etc

I believe the player profiles already have medal progression and season stats. TOG, geez, that would be complicated! Not sure that's entirely necessary at launch. Maybe later on. A stats page is possible, though I'm not sure you'd learn a whole lot. History is doable. An honour board, also a good idea. Records, another one. These will all get done at some stage, not sure if at launch though.

- Looking at my team, the players are all looking very similar â€" C and KF with pretty much the same stat line.  I’m thinking of restarting and trying to make very role specific players and see how that plays out, at the moment I always gravitate to making balanced players with the same stats, in the end though when the player reaches $700k+ the stats are all pretty much in the 7-10 range.

- The dual position players particularly the c/f/b seem to be too far behind a single position player that I’ve found they are of little use later in the game. They have too many negative skills to get rid of.  I had thoughts about making a c with b skills as a tagging type, but just didn’t work.  The exception to me is the R/KF, I’ve found they can be specialised ok in my experience.

Fascinated to see discussion of this stuff, it's going be the main topic of discussion in the forum post-launch I reckon. Unless you don't want to give up your tactical advantage!  ;D

- On the accuracy topic â€" I tried to make a small forward who has 11 snap and 10 crumb â€" he went 1.8 and for the season is 5.21, it’s possible he’s just taking set shots which he is 7 but I expected a bit more out of him.

This made me think of recording more exotic stats. I'll have a think about it. Might be something for a future release when I expand the assistants.

- I looked at having a low ST/weight/-tall (speedy outside player), but I don’t see any advantage to having low stats in these areas, perhaps there should be small advantage to QK/DA if the other stats are below a certain point.

- Some other cosmetics, random cartoon face generator would be cool, jumper colours, team mascot pics etc

I would love to have a random cartoon face generator, I've thought about it myself a fair bit. That would be awesome. I could think of ways to code it. It would be a bloody big job though.

I'm not so fussed about jumpers and mascots. That stuff seems rather silly to me in other games, including DT/SC.

Thanks for the feedback, Crog!

[Boomz]

Firstly, hats off, great effort, I think it’s a really solid game.  A friend and I started a similar project but got lazy when it came to coding.

Have only ran into a few minor bugs which have been mentioned already.

I’m nearing the end of season 7, so far only managed a pole-axing from Collingwood in the GF. I’ve not really had the fan issue others have had, I’ve pretty much had a steady increase.

Below are some of my musings/observations not in any logical order! Some have probably been covered already (I think it’s good as is btw):

- MVP award being slightly weighted based on stats (eg: say half a point added to the roll per 3 goals or 15 pos etc). The sub on a team that lost by over 10 goals getting the MVP seems slightly off the mark.

That is intentional. The MVP skill point that you get in Blood Bowl, which this element is based off, is completely random. The MVP in Mr Football is slightly less random, but I wanted to maintain that random factor so that there is some chance involved.

But should MVP really have chance involved? It seems a bit odd to me.

[PowerBug]

NNoooo, don't have a salary cap, then i'll be gone!!

[m0nty]

NNoooo, don't have a salary cap, then i'll be gone!!

I was talking about that specifically for qualification for the seconds MVP. Don't worry, there won't be a general salary cap.

Although... I have had some thoughts about running official lightning premierships, which would have extra tickets as prizes. Those would be open to various salary ranges. That's a post-launch thing, though