Everytime I try to get into this game, it kicks me in the groin

[dreamtheatervt]

I'm sorry for this rant, but right now I'm just really fed up with some aspects of the game and I need to vent. So I'll start with the one thing I really like about the game, the offensive side of the PDS is great - no complaints.

When I refer to "strong side" below, I am refering to RL, in game I simulate strong side by assuming the offense's strong side is the right side. Sam and Will are OLB's in game, Mike is middle LB.

1) It's a pain to get to plays in the PDS because there are so many plays crammed in one folder. It takes forever to scroll through them because the scrolling is choppy b/c there are too many plays. I've said it before, and I'll keep saying it until it happens or I give up on this game, but we need better sorting of plays (FOLDERS) in game ASAP. I don't think I'm willing to wait for 3.0 for this.

2) The defense is completely undermatched in terms of using the PDS. I will break this into several points.
a) The defense as is a pre-snap crap-shoot at what the offense is going to do. This is giving me headaches with the LB corps, as their inability to use zone effectively is KILLING me. I've encounted problems trying to set up a basic cover 3 defense from a 43, it's the starting point for almost all defenses. The CB's have outside deep 1/3, FS middle deep 1/3, SS has strong side flat, Sam has the strong side hook, Mike has the weak side hook, and Will has the weak flat. Will becomes the problem in the game. There is no way for him to diagnose run/pass, and respond appropriately. I either have to have him sprint to his zone, which will run him out of the play most of the time, or I can have him "Key on" a RB, in which case he has no pass responsibility (more on this later). Defense is not about guessing what the offense is going to do presnap and obeying instructions blindly, its either a "read and react" mentality or an "attack" mentality, and you need to be able to do both. Right now only "attack" works. Players are HORRIBLE at reading plays, you have to give them a run stopping assignment or a pass stopping assignment. This is particularly a problem for LB's, who need to play both. It KILLS the defense. You can't have a LB check for the run, then drop into a zone. It's one or the other. I included a screen shot of the cover 3 defense just in case anybody needs a picture.

b) Zone defenders are very unrelyable, particularly in deep zones. Big plays in the passing game usually occur on blown assignments or botched M2M coverage. In my experience in this game, a CB in M2M will shut down fly, flag, and deep fade routes much more often than a CB playing cover 3, in which the CB is giving up deep pass after deep pass. I even made a CB with 99 in all attributes just to make sure that it wasn't a personel problem. Still had tons of passes completed on him when he was in zone. In real life, zone defenses are more common because they have two advantages over M2M: 1) Zone defenders play the run better than M2M defenders because its easier to diagnose plays (in Max-FB, zone defenses seem to be less effective against the run), which in turn leads to 2) neutralizes talent mismatches by playing an area while reading the routes in front of them and the drop of the QB. The second one isn't something I expect to be seen in a video game. Point being zone coverage AI and ability needs to be beefed up.

c) "Key on" vs "M2M". I know I brought this up before, but it bears repeating. Key on works great for running plays, but on passing plays, the LB's will ignore the back they were keying on if they go down field. It's almost like their mind says "its not a running play, so I'll just stand here because I have no pass responsibility". Which leads to the question, "Why not just use M2M?" The answer to that is that leads to other problems, like making it easy for blockers to get angles because the LB is lining up on the RB. If I want to use the OLB's to cover the RB's, and the offense is in an I formation, all the backers 3 backers are lined up over the center. That makes for great blocking angles for the offense, and horrible pursuit angles for the defense. That's why you don't see it in real life.

The main point of point 2 is I don't like the "guess-work", because that's not football. If I was into guessing, I'd play the lottery. I don't want to hear the "you can't defend everything" arguement either, because that's not what this is about. It's about being able to run an effective defense, which I feel I can't do as is.

I don't like feeling limited to M2M, and then having the problem of having to choose between two flawed options for the RB's, a "Key on" that ignores passing plays and a "M2M" option that presents its own set of problems mentioned above. I know I'm going to get the standard responses I always get when I bring things up - along the lines I'm doing something wrong. If I am doing something wrong, then tell me what it is. If you agree with my observations, please pipe up.

I expect to "dumb down" my football knowledge for any football game as I realize that no game could possibly match my knowlegde from a software engineering point of view, but I don't feel like I should have to dumb it down as far I feel I have to get something out of this game.

Minor complaint: Lob passes seem to still be fired pretty hard.

Summary: On offense: FB-Max PDS > FBPro 98
On defense: FB-Max PDS < FBPro 98

I need a more intelligent defense!!!!!!!!

[David Winter]

Well.. I'm sorry you're frustrated. I'll touch on a couple of your points.

The plays folder; I have noticed that many customers have had difficulty importing plays for use with the game. There's only one place to put them, yet this still causes confusion. I still get emails asking where to put the plays. The single folder also improves the games ability to validate a playbook. By scattering plays around in different folders, validating a playbook is going to be much more difficult and is much more prone to bugs. It was suggested that each playbook have it's own folder. That is a good idea in principle, but it has a number of draw backs too, not the least being you now have multiple copies of the same play. That means you need to make edits multiple times.

I would be interested in hearing your suggestions for a multiple folder structure. If it can be done without users duplicating plays and still allows for fast and effective playbook validation, it would be something I can look at. One change I may be able to make is splitting the plays up into men per side. So a folder for each 8, 11, and 12 man, and each play category (offensive, defense, special teams). Although 500 11man offensive plays is still going to be a couple of seconds to load into the PDS dialogs.

As for the defensive AI; The PDS was designed, purposefully, to use a "Do as I'm told" command system. Very similar to FBPro, it uses specific commands to accomplish specific tasks. Use the commands as intended and you get good results. Try to use them for things they were not intended to do, and you're going to get less than desireable effects. The [KEYON] command is designed for defense against the run.

One of the other reasons for this design choice is that I did not want to run into a situation where the player on the field was not doing what the user has explicity told him to do. How frustrating would it be to have a player told to process a run defense command and then all of a sudden he's sprinting down field to do something else? You would end up in a situation where you'd never really know what the player would do on the field regardless of the commands given.

Now all of that said, I have made some changes to the AI so that it does a better job of flipping the [KEYON] command to [M2M Over Coverage] if the target player goes over the LOS. So if you key on a running back and that back goes down field, the defender will revert to basic M2M coverage. This may help some customers, but I know it's going to be problematic for others because the player is no longer doing what they were told to do.

Please be aware that the sort of things you have listed are very involved. Over time these areas will be looked at and possibly added/changed/enhanced where it's possible for me to do.

thanks
David

[Frank Brickowski]

When i want to edit certain plays i go into the PLaybook editing utility that came with the game and export the playbook i want. Then i go into the Max football directory and change the name of the "Plays" Folder to "plays1". I then change the name of the folder that was just exported to "plays". You have to make sure the current playbook file is in the proper folder before going into the game's pds. But, once you get there you can just load the players that were in the exported playbook. It's much better than weeding through 350 plays or so.

[dreamtheatervt]

Thanks for your response David.  I'm not expecting an overnight fix, but I wanted people to be aware of my concerns, so that it would at least be discussed.

The KeyOn fix you talked about is basically what I wanted.

I guess my real problem lies with zone coverage, both in its use and execution.  Generally, the secondary and people in deep zones are playing pass first, then run, where as LB's assigned to short zones play run first, then retreat to their zone when they read pass, which is what makes the draw play such a weapon in real life that never seems to translate to video games.  In my limited programming knowledge (basic), I know that if-then statements can be programmed.  A lineback could have something like:

1) If run, key on HB
2) If pass, pass defense - zone

and deep defenders would just have Pass Defense - zone

Adding "if-then" to the game wouldn't change the effectiveness of plays already created, but would add a dimension of realism and genuinity currently missing.

As for folders, I don't know how the programming end of things works, but just having folders in plays folder would work for me.  Users could then keep all the stock plays in the plays folder, and put all their plays for a particular offense in one folder, another folder for a different offense, and so forth.

[Marauders]

1) It's a pain to get to plays in the PDS because there are so many plays crammed in one folder. It takes forever to scroll through them because the scrolling is choppy b/c there are too many plays. I've said it before, and I'll keep saying it until it happens or I give up on this game, but we need better sorting of plays (FOLDERS) in game ASAP. I don't think I'm willing to wait for 3.0 for this.

I agree.  One should note that the scrolling is often quick and not choppy with new computer systems, but systems only a couple years old can get relatively slow loads and choppy scrolling with large playbooks.  This has been noted.

I would like having playbooks each having their own subfolder and having separate offensive and defensive folders.  It would be nice if the "save to playbook" button saved the play to the current playbook folder only.  If one wanted to have all of the plays in one folder, one could just use a default folder and export plays out of that.  I see this as something that may have to be done with any upgraded coaching features in the future.

2) The defense is completely undermatched in terms of using the PDS. I will break this into several points.

I agree.  Setting up a defense is much more difficult than an offense, as it is in the real world.

The PDS is powerful, but Maximum Football is game, and the game has limitations on both sides of the ball.  One has to be able to adjust to those limitations.  Even a powerful play design system will never be as realistic as real life.  That is a given, but sometimes the plays just have to be tweaked to be more effective.

a) The defense as is a pre-snap crap-shoot at what the offense is going to do. This is giving me headaches with the LB corps, as their inability to use zone effectively is KILLING me.

c) "Key on" vs "M2M". I know I brought this up before, but it bears repeating. Key on works great for running plays, but on passing plays, the LB's will ignore the back they were keying on if they go down field. It's almost like their mind says "its not a running play, so I'll just stand here because I have no pass responsibility".

I agree, but one has to do the best one can.  One has to look at how the game does things and best try to replicate a real world situation from that.

I actually have a redesigned play for the Fun and Gun playbook that is similar to the one you posted above, so I know what you have been trying to do and what you have been going through when testing the play.

There has been past discussion about some of the points you have brought up.  The beta team has asked for some defensive motion for 3.0, and David may try to get that in.  We have also brought up potential problems with Key On: and other commands for mixed Man-Zone defenses, and those are being looked at.  For the most part, David and the beta team try to stay one step ahead with this type of stuff, but there are limitations to what can be done and when it can be achieved.  It is a good idea to take a look at these areas from time to time, nevertheless.

Thank you for taking the time to post, as community member feedback is important.  It is nice to know we are on the same page.

For now, it would be a good idea to mix in some linebacker or safety Read commands with your deep zones to help cover the run plays.

With the Zone 3 Left Sky play above, you may want to try to shorten the depth of the zones and consider giving OL2 a smaller zone to cover. I have seen the Minesota Vikings run a similar play in the real world against the Colts, and that linebacker could not get over to cover his zone and maintain any sort of gap assignment against the run.