BTS: Frequently Asked Questions

[Valdarix]

I've read through all 18 pages of this thread and have a few questions that I didn't see asked or answered.

1. I have read about the injury system and the health map and it's nice to see the the weekly diagnosis included (Q, P, etc). I did not see however how long term injuries will work. Will the game include the PUP list, reserve/non-football injury (for injured college players being drafted), injured reserve, IR with designation to return and the ability to cut players that are injured by negotiating an injury settlement be included?

2. Love the inclusion of college players in the game. Will we see only seniors or will we see full college rosters? If full rosters will the players develop over the season(s) or will their attributes be hard coded? Is a behind the scenes college sim running to develop players and generate stats?

3. Quick question on Schemes/Styles. Will a player perform better in a scheme he is suited for vs poorly in a scheme he is not?

4. Will there be un-drafted free-agents, will players remain free agents even if they have not been on a roster for a year or more?

5. I read there was some conference/division customization. Will we be able to move teams from conference to conference or div to div? For example swapping Oakland and St.Louis etc if we wanted to create better geographic divisions.

6. Will coaches records be kept for current and historical coaches? Wins, Loss, Ties, Playoff App, Div Wins, Conf Titles, SB W/L. As well as who they coached and the how they faired from year to year? The year to year tracking would be awesome if you included all data not just their HC jobs, so also any Co-ord or pos coaching they did and how the team faired.

7. Will how teams play in games be affected by things like rivalries, scope of the game (SB, Conf Title, Play offs, must wins late in season) traveling west to east, etc.

I am sure I have a ton more but thats all I got at the moment.

To close I want to say thank you for taking on this project. As an avid stats nut I find sports sims to be the best sports games out there and had recently started the design of my own NFL sim. I stumbled on this thread and jumped for joy. I am scrapping my project and anxiously await all the glorious news on BTS. Let me know if you need and alpha or beta tester. Would love to be of any assistance.

[Francis Cole]

1)
PUP - if there's time for V1
IR - I'm putting all the reserve lists (apart from PUP) into one IR, I think this will be less confusing for users; if a player has a long term injury you put him on IR, as opposed to trying to work out where he was injured.
IR DFR - I'll allow one player to come off IR from the IR list when the user requests, again I won't make a separate list just for that because I don't want the user to have deal with 10 lists which are all basically the same.

2)It won't just be seniors, though I don't know if technically it will full
I'll see how much slowdown there will be by creating (e.g.) 120 players per team as opposed to (e.g.)50 for example.

3)Yes, but it undecided exactly how at the moment.

4)Of course.

5)Yes

6)It will depend on how much research the team can do. But I think eventually (e.g. may not be V1) we'll have complete history for every coach who has ever been in the NFL.

7)To a certain degree.

Thanks,
Francis

Originally Posted by Valdarix

I've read through all 18 pages of this thread and have a few questions that I didn't see asked or answered.

1. I have read about the injury system and the health map and it's nice to see the the weekly diagnosis included (Q, P, etc). I did not see however how long term injuries will work. Will the game include the PUP list, reserve/non-football injury (for injured college players being drafted), injured reserve, IR with designation to return and the ability to cut players that are injured by negotiating an injury settlement be included?

2. Love the inclusion of college players in the game. Will we see only seniors or will we see full college rosters? If full rosters will the players develop over the season(s) or will their attributes be hard coded? Is a behind the scenes college sim running to develop players and generate stats?

3. Quick question on Schemes/Styles. Will a player perform better in a scheme he is suited for vs poorly in a scheme he is not?

4. Will there be un-drafted free-agents, will players remain free agents even if they have not been on a roster for a year or more?

5. I read there was some conference/division customization. Will we be able to move teams from conference to conference or div to div? For example swapping Oakland and St.Louis etc if we wanted to create better geographic divisions.

6. Will coaches records be kept for current and historical coaches? Wins, Loss, Ties, Playoff App, Div Wins, Conf Titles, SB W/L. As well as who they coached and the how they faired from year to year? The year to year tracking would be awesome if you included all data not just their HC jobs, so also any Co-ord or pos coaching they did and how the team faired.

7. Will how teams play in games be affected by things like rivalries, scope of the game (SB, Conf Title, Play offs, must wins late in season) traveling west to east, etc.

I am sure I have a ton more but thats all I got at the moment.

To close I want to say thank you for taking on this project. As an avid stats nut I find sports sims to be the best sports games out there and had recently started the design of my own NFL sim. I stumbled on this thread and jumped for joy. I am scrapping my project and anxiously await all the glorious news on BTS. Let me know if you need and alpha or beta tester. Would love to be of any assistance.

[olivertheorem]

Isn't all the head-coach info he's asking for already available on pro-football-reference.com?

As I recall, there's right around 125 FBS teams. At, say, 60 per team (which is probably less than RL) that's upwards of 7,200 players just in college, never mind the NFL. That's a heavy load (I have no idea how this compares to a standard OOTP setup).

[Francis Cole]

Originally Posted by olivertheorem

Isn't all the head-coach info he's asking for already available on pro-football-reference.com?

Yes, but someone has to type that out into our online DB at some point
Also we need all the assistant coaches!

As I recall, there's right around 125 FBS teams. At, say, 60 per team (which is probably less than RL) that's upwards of 7,200 players just in college, never mind the NFL. That's a heavy load.

Yes that is a concern.

[james17]

This must be a stupid question because I haven't seen it posted:

Will the game be able to run on a Windows 8 laptop? A Windows 7 desktop?

[olivertheorem]

Originally Posted by Francis Cole

Yes, but someone has to type that out into our online DB at some point
Also we need all the assistant coaches!

Can your online DB import a CSV file? Because you can convert the PFR web tables to CSV format, copy that to Excel or something, save as a CSV file, and import.

Column order could be a problem though, I guess.

[Valdarix]

My main concern is if the coaches data will be tracked going forward from the start of the game world. Historical data is awesome and a really cool fluff piece. I just want to be able to look at a coach 10 - 15 years in and see where he's been and what he's done in the scope of the 10 -15 year universe of the game at that point.

[Sam C]

Originally Posted by Francis Cole

That's a great question, and one I've thought of a lot.
Obviously for realism we need them, but when viewing a 2D display of a game how can you tell if the player's knee touched the ground before the fumble etc?
It's something we are going to have think a lot about how we implement it.

For the challenge flags, this could be done in a similar guise to how Football Manager simulates controversial penalty decisions or offsides. In FM, the assistant manager tells you after the game that it's probably not worth appealing the decision because the official made the correct call. For BtS this could be an 'in-game' hint where the Replay Assistant advises you on whether to challenge the call or not. He gives you a % chance and you can choose whether to go for it or not, leaving you to factor in the criticality of the game and how many time outs you have left.

There could also be some nice drama with all scoring plays automatically being reviewed, "I think I've won, but I can't be sure until the final decision has been confirmed". The whole review process could be a seriously nifty feature if implemented well. You could get really clever and have the play clock running down simultaneously to add an element of panic, although that wouldn't be as popular with somebody who is making themselves a coffee and is watching the game with half an eye...or Andy Reid for that matter.


I'm only half way through reading this thread but I'm finding all the talk about 'customization' quite distracting and completely agree with tward13 and Francis' assertions about picking one aspect (in this case, the 2015 NFL season) and getting it right. Asking for customization is almost like saying "I want you to write a game for me", so while it might be your dream to have a Slovakian Football League with 62 teams, 5 downs and 10 points for a punt return, it does the overall game quality no favours. Customization should come down to which features of the game you delegate to your GM/Assistant/Owner and not the ability to tweak the overall structure of the game. Last time I checked, it was an NFL management game so you can go head-to-head with Bill Belichick, not a commisioner game where you go head to head with Roger Goodell.

Ultimately, the successful games that grow and expand are the ones that 1) extremely accurate/close to real life simulators and 2) add new features and customizations as the development team expands because the game has become commercially successful.

For this reason, I would get a headstart on this game using four starting points:
1) OOTP - Blindingly obvious but it's a great game and BtS has access to it's code
2) Football Manager - The Grandaddy of them all, the pedigree and the standard bearer. At the heart it aims to be the most accurate and comprehensive soccer simulator but over the years its added some great features, tried to stay in touch with the more casual fan (not just the sports stat nerd) and has always made money, allowing the Sports Interactive team to expand and make the game much, much better over 20 years or so.
3) EA NFL Head Coach - far from perfect but with some great features and most importantly, the closest we have to an NFL management game with 'mass market appeal' because of it's close ties with the Madden franchise.
4) Fantasy Football - incredibly popular. Why? And how can some of this popularity be injected into BtS without watering down the product and making it lose its realism.

[Francis Cole]

Originally Posted by Valdarix

My main concern is if the coaches data will be tracked going forward from the start of the game world. Historical data is awesome and a really cool fluff piece. I just want to be able to look at a coach 10 - 15 years in and see where he's been and what he's done in the scope of the 10 -15 year universe of the game at that point.

Yes. That is one of the benefits of moving away from how OOTP saves everything (in text files). The downside is that you won't be able to edit everything like OOTP, the plus side is the game can track everything much easily. Coaching trees should be fairly easy (not for v1 before anyone asks!) but if you were saving in text all the time it would be a nightmare.

[Francis Cole]

Originally Posted by james17

This must be a stupid question because I haven't seen it posted:

Will the game be able to run on a Windows 8 laptop? A Windows 7 desktop?

W7 - yes
W8 laptop - if it's the proper W8 and not W8 RT (can you run desktop apps such as OOTP already? If so it's the proper W8 and you are okay).

[Cryomaniac]

Originally Posted by Francis Cole

Yes. That is one of the benefits of moving away from how OOTP saves everything (in text files). The downside is that you won't be able to edit everything like OOTP, the plus side is the game can track everything much easily. Coaching trees should be fairly easy (not for v1 before anyone asks!) but if you were saving in text all the time it would be a nightmare.

Anything being less editable than OOTP is never a good sign for me (see my concerns for FHM, among other posts in this thread...), but I can see why you would do it like that. Would it be possible (probably not for v1) to make it so you can export and import things like that as CSVs, even if they aren't saved as text files normally (which I agree is not really a sensible way of doing it).

[Francis Cole]

I've expanded the in-game editor so you can edit transactions/stats etc.
I'm not sure about all the importing stuff, we'll have to see in the future how feasible that is

[Cryomaniac]

Originally Posted by Francis Cole

I've expanded the in-game editor so you can edit transactions/stats etc.
I'm not sure about all the importing stuff, we'll have to see in the future how feasible that is

That makes sense.

[james17]

Originally Posted by Francis Cole

W7 - yes
W8 laptop - if it's the proper W8 and not W8 RT (can you run desktop apps such as OOTP already? If so it's the proper W8 and you are okay).

Yep. The laptop is the real W8 not RT.

So I'm cool.

[Francis Cole]

Yep, in fact I'm developing it on Windows 8

[frangipard]

Originally Posted by Sam C

For the challenge flags, this could be done in a similar guise to how Football Manager simulates controversial penalty decisions or offsides. In FM, the assistant manager tells you after the game that it's probably not worth appealing the decision because the official made the correct call. For BtS this could be an 'in-game' hint where the Replay Assistant advises you on whether to challenge the call or not. He gives you a % chance and you can choose whether to go for it or not, leaving you to factor in the criticality of the game and how many time outs you have left.

And, really, this is the way it works in real life.

The head coach is standing on the 50 yard line, the play takes place on the far sideline at the 30, he's keeping one eye on the field, one on the jumbrotron, one on his playcall, and he's supposed to have an opinion about whether a foot was inbounds? No, that's the job of the coaches in the booth, who have a TV screen right in front of them and who tell him over the headset what they think. He makes the call on the basis of his confidence in his coach and the risk assessment.

[Lithium]

Couple of questions:
Can you trade players for conditional draft picks?
In OOTP, you can't sign a player if it puts your projected payroll above your projected budget in a future season. But in the NFL, teams regularly sign deals that push their future payroll above the projected salary cap - can you do this in BTS?

[Francis Cole]

Not sure for the first one, but certainly for the 2nd one. It's probably just safe to ignore what OOTP does in terms of salaries etc as everything has changed.

[Rumplebeanskin]

Did a search but didn't find what I was looking to ask with either "facility" or "stadium".

Is there likely to be some in game tool for
Creating a new stadium
Upgrading your current stadium
Making any changes to your practice facility
Moving your team to a new city

Thanks!

[Francis Cole]

Not for V1, sorry.
V1 will be primarily concentrating on what a GM/HC does, not what the owner does.