Good Day,
First of all, my compliments to the the developer. This is a sleek and elegant interface, and the more I have played over the last couple of days the more I have come to like it (especially since I was educated on the autosave feature ) I truly want this game to succeed and thrive and will eagerly try new versions as they are available. My football sim adventures go back many years to the old days of playing the board game version of Strat-O-Matic, faithfully researching roster moves from the prior season and hand compiling stats as I played through a season. The computer version of it of course alleviated some of that drudgery, and while Strat-O-Matic is still masterful from a stats perspective, regrettably their computer game design (at least when I last played a season a couple of years back) was still stuck in 1998. The idea behind this game, with its emphasis on management, is very appealing.
After a only a few days, I have some observations:
Player Weights I noted these in another post, but there are some exceptionally large players at some positions, and some exceptionally small ones. Not that you won't occasionally encounter a behemoth at some positions (Craig Heyward or JaMarcus Russell for example), but they are outliers. While I haven't played enough to see if there is weight variation from season to season, that could be interesting as well from a realism standpoint, as some players will come in undersized for their position and gain weight as they add muscle while others might lose weight if they come in out of shape and overweight.
Player Names With a nod to any sensitivities, and with no intent to offend, the player names are overwhelmingly White/European sounding. I don't have an exact stat, but college rosters for Power 5 schools are roughly 46-50% African American . In the NFL, African Americans comprise close to 70% of rosters. Reflecting this diversity in whatever random naming routine that is employed might be difficult to achieve, but I think it is important for the sake of realism and inclusivity. A look through NFL and college rosters might perhaps be fruitful for extracting combinations. Not sure if this will help or not but I found this interesting: hxxps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African-American_names
Week to Week Rankings I have noticed these fluctuate very unrealistically. For example, I observed Alabama starting in the number one spot and over six weeks go 1 -> 21 -> 6 -> 6 -> 4 -> 9 while all the while being undefeated. Usually, once a team is in the number one spot they'll keep it until somebody knocks them off or unless they have a poor performance against an inferior team - and even then they wouldn't drop 20 points, even with a loss. Also, it usually unlikely that a prestige Power 5 school with a single loss (or even two) is going to be ranked under an undefeated non-Power 5, non-prestige team. For example, here are my latest rankings: (all undefeated after 6 weeks) 1. Virginia 2. Clemson 3 Iowa State 4 Buffalo 5 Louisiana 6 Tulane 7 Auburn 8 Western Michigan 9 Alabama 10 Michigan. 11-14 are prestige teams with 1 loss ... there's no way they are sitting behind Buffalo, Louisiana, Tulane and Western Michigan. Those teams might belong in the top 25, but they'll be somewhere between 14-25 just because of who they are and aren't and the weaker schedule they play. Not that it is 'just', but that's the way the rankings have always been.
Team Stats I'd like to see full team stats in the box score for a game similar to below (from an ESPN box score). Also, a team's cumulative stats for the season in the same box score format, including red zone stats.
Player Game Stats It would be nice to see return yardage (punt, kick, interception) accounted for as well as punting (including inside 20) and kicking ( FG with long and XP)
Past Box Scores Maybe I haven't figured out where to look, but I don't see where you can look at a box score for a previously plated game
Sack Yardage I haven't been able to discern whether sack yardage is appropriately subtracted from team rushing totals (subtracted from passing totals in the pros), but something to consider
Half Sacks So far, I haven't noticed any half sacks in stats
Spelling I have noticed some spelling mistakes here and there (e.g. 'catched' instead of 'caught'. I'd be happy to catalog these as I find them if desired.
Variation in Wording In general, the emails could be varied a bit. An example would be more specific rationale about what the recruit didn't like about his campus visit. " ... he thinks that something is missing;' seems to be used a lot - maybe mix it up a bit with he didn't like the weather, he didn't like the food, he didn't like his position coach, the mascot looked at him funny etc
Players Turning Pro I have seem to have an inordinate number of players declaring for the draft early from a mediocre/poor football program. Further, I have been unable to convince a single one to stay regardless of my talk selections.
Running QBs I probably haven't played enough to see if there are any good running QBs represented, but if not they should be - an Adrian Martinez-type, for instance, that is quite dangerous with his feet and who will often account for a good percentage of his team's rushing totals.
That's all for know, I'm sure I'll think of some more. Really great work so far - I truly appreciate it.
GBR
Dave
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