Fish wrote:Just so I understand better...
Yes Eli Rodgers at 68 is the 5th best WR on my roster, but I planned to start him because of his role on a potent passing offense in RL and my understanding that skilled players (and defensive players to a lesser extent) with good RL performance receive an uptick in the actual sim. For arguments sake, if Rodgers had a 150+ yard, 2-3 TD flperformanve would he still sit the bench even though I have him in my starting lineup?
It may not matter this week as Wheaton was out making Eli 4th and at least in the grade, but I'm still struggling a bit with how exactly the hybrid system works and how much control we as the GM have. Feel free to answer in PM offline if this would derail the overall thread about Madden ratings.
For your example, GMs can't change anything in terms of the team strength averages other than acquiring players. Whatever choices you make for your WRs in the depth chart lineup do not change the WR average. The WR/OL/F7/SEC averages are calculated by the system based upon the player grades on the roster. You can't change anything related to those averages. They come right from the system, right from your overall roster and nothing you can do to change those averages other than acquiring new players.
We don't have our sim teams set a defensive starting lineup, yet the system generates that front 7 and secondary strength grades. It works the same way with receiver strength grade. It's not dependent upon your choices, just your roster.
Whether a WR has a 0 grade or 68 grade will effect the system-generated average (if he's one of your top grades in that area) but will not impact anything else. While grades don't really factor much into the depth chart choices you make, those decisions can matter in terms of game stats uploaded. Think of those depth chart decisions as a game plan of players you want to be CERTAIN are part of the game stats uploaded no matter what. You choose those players in the depth chart that you want your offensive game plan to focus around. Who you put in the starting RB1 spot, for example, will tend to focus more on that featured back you chose versus your designated backups. Now sometimes the game stats uploaded will shift game action more toward bench players if they have amazing stats while your starters were very limited with lesser stats, but all things equal it will focus more often toward the players you want it to.
This is primarily a GM game. Primarily an off-season team building game. That's where most of our gameplay and GM control lies. You draft players, you sign free agents. After that, the GM sits up in the box and watches the coaches and players do their thing. GMs don't have a ton of control on the game simulation. You can say which players you want to be the focus of a gameplan, but the game stats uploaded dictate the action more than you do. We don't have our GMs call plays (real GMs don't either). We don't have them throw virtual passes, etc. You build a team, and then see how they preform. In that regard it's somewhat like fantasy football where you set your team and then see how many points they rack up, except we have bigger rosters and generate results like a real game one play at a time using adjusted averages and completion percentages. But there isn't a lot of in-game control for GMs in reality or here. Your job as sim GM is mostly putting the best roster you can together, and we try to have a simulator that best rewards those teams that put the best rosters together from both objective grade strength and on-the-field performance.
