Last week, I asked for commentary about the optional chemistry system within Front Office Football. I know most multi-player leagues use it, but it’s not a perfect system. I received quite a few replies, which I’ll discuss in this article. I was going to include people’s names with this discussion. No one objected, but I decided against it.
I appreciate those of you who took the time to email. It’s given me a lot to think about. Here are some of the highlights, as well as my comments:
I completely agree with the core principle that drove you to add chemistry to the game – and I have defended its inclusion on the forums more than once. As far as I’m concerned, the specifics are not what’s important, it’s the operation – and I think having elements like cohesion and chemistry add real depth and value to a game like this. So, overall – I come down on your side here. I want it to be interesting, consequential without being overwhelming, and manageable. I think the current FOF chemistry system does this pretty well… Even if the mechanics seem silly on the surface, I think it’s a reasonable proxy for something that is worth having in the game.
I think it does, too. That’s why it has remained in the game so long. At one point, I included astrological signs on the player card. I removed it shortly thereafter because the reminder that astrology is part of the game is a red flag for many people. What’s important is that when acquiring or drafting a player, it’s easy to find notification as to whether there may be affinities or conflicts.
My main thought to pass on here is elements like these could add more value to the game if they generated some sort of output or feedback to the user. I suspect it is frustrating to you the depth to which some of the intense FOFers will tear apart the data they get – but hear me out. What if in the game messages, there were some text that indicated something like “Some of the Miami linemen seem to be quarreling after the play” or “the defensive backs joined for a celebration after the big play” with those tipoffs indicating that there is a negative/positive chemistry effect in play, at some level. I know this inches the game slightly toward the soap opera that you don’t want to become… but having some feedback to the user seems like it could help make these parts of the game structurally better off.
I think the main problem with something like that is that if it’s repetitive, it causes harm to the game in the long run. And, in a case like this, if it’s not repetitive it’s not very instructive. Our one major real-world example is the Miami linemen you mentioned. Undoubtedly, the chemistry issue with the Dolphins caused the team harm. But in real life, if chemistry is an issue, we would rarely see the soap opera. In the end, I don’t want chemistry to become a “must react” with game play. I want building through chemistry to be one way to improve a team, not something that demands your reaction. I want people able to make decisions, weigh pluses and minuses.
Is it possible to tie players together based on shared attributes or something? Often when players share an agent, they also spend time in the off season training together. The same is also true for players who come from the same schools either in high school or college, or play for the same team in the NFL.
This is a really interesting idea. Rather than astrology, use something that’s already in the game that naturally binds players. We’ve all heard how Bill Belichick loves to add Florida players. The problem is there are just too many schools – hundreds in the game. But what about the agents? Currently it’s just a piece of information that has some effect on the complex model of what a player does when choosing between teams making an offer in free agency. As well as a similar tie-in when renegotiating contracts. What if I dropped the number of agents to ten? They could have different chemistry bonuses. Possibly a couple of antagonistic relationships between the stronger agents? I like the idea a lot, but I think it’s a little risky at this stage to implement something of that magnitude. It’s something to file away in my notebook. Thanks for the suggestion.
Can we have some say in determining who are the leaders on the team? I don’t think we need full control to make any player a leader, but if we could pick our leaders from a list of eligible players right before training camp, I think that would be a solid compromise. Once a player becomes an eligible leader, he should get some kind of icon next to his name and should always be eligible to be a leader. Leaders should have an effect when they’re on the field too, so that backups and depth guys aren’t generally found as leaders. I just want some way of knowing who my potential leaders are and to be able to plan accordingly.based on that. Maybe one way for a player to become a leader is to be the best candidate on a team without an eligible leader, because sometimes guys are kind of forced into the role. Leaders should be somewhat rare I feel. There should be a fairly high premium on leadership.
Another interesting idea, but I think a lot of GMs would balk at having that kind of control over something that’s usually voted on by players. But you get at the heart of the concept I’m struggling with here; chemistry should be about the players who matter on your team.
Would it be possible to diversify a little bit and have multiple team captains, similar to how position leaders currently work and then let the player choose an offensive and a defensive team leader for chemistry purposes? Tying chemistry bonuses to the QB and WOLB seems arbitrary on the defensive side and generic on the offensive.
I think team captains, in the end, are both too specific and too arbitrary for use with running something like chemistry. I’ve written the functions that determine the captain, somewhat based on what I’ve read about real-life choices. Most of the time on offense, the quarterback is the captain. Exceptions being younger starters. On defense, though, it varies more. The MLB or the WOLB may end up calling the defensive signals most often, but that doesn’t necessarily correlate to captain status.
Here’s how it will work… offensive and defensive captains will be chosen in training camp. This will be a fairly straightforward assessment of years of service with the team and games started. The team captain will have a small effect on team performance during games based on the number of years in a row he has been captain (you see this as the yellow stars on the C patch on jerseys in the NFL) up to four, plus that player’s “play-to-win” attribute, which isn’t used a tremendous amount in the game as it is now. The reason for this is that captains lead by example.
Chemistry, which will remain optional, is about personalities. Captains are the veterans who may or may not be vocal, but set the tone for the team. This still may seem somewhat arbitrary and data-manage-y rather than making football decisions, but I think it works and it’s realistic. It adds the concept of long-term understanding of your starters. On offense, it adds a small dimension to the quarterback choice. On defense, it ties you closer to the decisions about those aging veterans. And it’s completely visible and easy to contemplate, but it’s also not a large enough effect that you can’t win without it. There will be no “negative” captains in that switching to a less-experienced captain will never be an improvement over a long-term veteran who has a low play-to-win attribute.
IMO those spots should be for developmental players, role players and special teams players. You don’t see many players in the NFL kept for being team guys, it’s special teams potential or a specific role they fill on the team.
I agree. The one change to the chemistry system is that if a player doesn’t have starting experience, he won’t count in the chemistry algorithm unless he was drafted the current year in the first four rounds (since games started are not included in player files, this restriction is turned off in year one of a career and halved in year two).
Your article is a clear admission that modeling chemistry using a model of astrological signs predicated on date of birth is inadequate and that a preferable method would include chemistry concepts based on attributes. I’m an Industrial/Organizational Psychologist and have been in an FOF MP league for several years now. I’m very familiar with various personality theories and use of personality in employee assessment and selection. I would encourage you to consider the FiveFactor Model (FFM), also known as the Big Five personality traits, as a method to model chemistry and, in particular, leadership in your game.
I’m personally fascinated by this stuff. I have a book about the Myers-Briggs Type indicator, with its familiar 16-block chart (this writer goes on to say that MBTI is similarly inadequate for this purpose, and I agree). I thought about doing something along these lines, and I appreciate the links he sent that would help me learn more about these concepts. Do I want Front Office Football players to become competent amateur organizational psychologists? If it were well presented, sure, why not? But I don’t think this is easy. As he said, even the life’s work of Carl Jung isn’t quite sufficient when it comes to analyzing group dynamics on a football team. There’s a game in here somewhere. Real analysis of group dynamics goes right to the heart of the resource allocation genre of board and computer games.
I love FOF and TCY and Baseball Mogul for that matter because they give me a realistic
opportunity to run a team while PLAYING A GAME. It’s a game and simulation, not the real thing. And quite frankly, when you start putting each and every aspect of real life into A GAME, it ceases to become a game and becomes more of a job, micro managing each and every detail.
I’m not always good at drawing that line properly. I can’t forget that what I bring to the table is the aspect of a somewhat realistic simulation. If I start simplifying Front Office Football and try competing where I can’t win, you should play Madden instead – the graphics are amazing and they do a nice job teaching football concepts – it’s just not a simulation per se. The question I ask a lot is how do I reduce the number of choices I ask you to make, while giving you even more control over the outcome.
I also received a few comments on my lack of specifics with regard to release dates.
On that, I can only repeat that FOF8 is a major rewrite. It includes a completely new and much more realistic approach to game planning. Right now, it doesn’t produce NFL results, but the alternative is to make your input as a game planner less influential. That defeats the purpose of implementing this huge change. So I have to spend more time tuning the engine, which is an open-ended development item.
I don’t know when it will be ready. I would like to release it this fall, but I don’t know. I’m not yet in that final stage where beta testing is going on and I’m working on player files and documentation. FOF8 is my top priority right now.
Some have asked about 2016 rosters for FOF7. I almost never work on a player file this early in the season regardless, but I will only do one for FOF7 if it becomes clear I won’t release FOF8 until next fall. One disadvantage to being a solo developer is that it’s very difficult to support more than one version of the game.