Phillosophy of Roster updates: Remixing vs Custom Design

[Dusto]

I've been trying to figure out the most enjoyable way to update this years TBorg-2014.nes cart for the end of the season roster.  I've been using various stat pages in order to establish performance ranking standards.  Then watching some of their various highlights on NFL.com and other sights with season footage from 2013.  For instance Richard Sherman leads the league in interceptions, but most of his are catch and down/catch and roll type ints.  He doesn't run in from out of nowhere on any of them to take them the opposite way.   For him, given the clips I've seen I feel like Mark Carrier of the Bears is more represenative of his playstyle.   

 

Buck and I were talking over the abundance of power backs this year in the top 10 as well.  Lacy from GB,  Lynch from Seattle, and A-Train from Washington all have put up legitimate bids for the Okoye spot.   There are only 2 power backs with a represenative amount of HP and still at least 50 ms,  Okoye and Ottis Anderson.  With Neal Anderson having a little of the mold as well.  The discussion here becomes,  does it mess with the balance of the original game too much if we have 2 or even 3 Okoyes running about.   Additonally some of these guys have some real breakaway speed that no one in the Tecmo universe with more than 75 hitting power currently does.

 

I've found that overly tweaking some of these attributes creates too much of a super player. A lot of the custom rom edits in the history section are guilty of this. And i usually try and go to edit them out to bring the game to a realistic level of player talent.  Bo Jackson and QB Eagles in the original cart were toeing if not a few steps over that line.  I feel like if a truely exceptional player comes along (Vick back in the early 2000s, Peterson in 2012 etc,) those spot can be opened.  In a season like this one where McCoy lead the league with 1600 yards, I feel like the Bo spot could stay on the sideline.    Kaepernick even after his Packers performance, probably isn't QB Eagles worthy.  That was a 900+ yard rushing season,  Kaep put up a good 500 this season so a case could be made.   Meanwhile his mobile colleague RGIII after his surgery probably falls down into a Rodney Pete or even Testaverde mix of accuracy and scrambling.

 

 

Anyway. I just wanted to open up this discussion a litte further. I'm interested to hear other people's thoughts.  Some of the main things I'm interested in hearing is (Is it best to stick with the 1991 player templates, even if one doesn't perfectly capture all of a players attributes?     If I go with customizing player stats, should we come up with some sort of min stats and stats cap so that we don't end up with supermen?  What are your thoughts on ommitting the outliers (Bo, Haddix, Eagels), in seasons where no one stands far above the crowd?)

Edited January 9, 2014 by Dusto

[Lamefest]

This is my 6th year making my own updated ROM. Every year I tweak it a little but I think I finally landed on something I like.

For the most part I stick to the same proportion of distribution of each individual attribute. If I'm doing a 28 team ROM, my RBs will have one 75 MS one 69 four 63 etc like the original. For 32 team ROMs I then keep the proportions of quantity per attribute. So if there's 16 extra RB spots those 16 spots will add the most common quantities (probably about 12 of the 16 would be 38s and 44s). Each attribute has different combinations of stats that I use. For example a RBs RS is determined by TDs, TD%, and HP. This way there are no carbon copies of the original players but the distribution of talents is about the same. There are multiple "Christian Okoye" candidates this year so why make one of them get stuck with say Tom Rathmans skill set.

QB MS is one of the few attributes I skew based on year. Vick circa 2006 maybe worthy of a 56 but few others are close. I think I landed on 44 for a few guys this year but nothing higher than that.

[BO FB Offtackle Left]

I like to use the original guys as models but then I'll tweak them based on the new players. Lately for the better RBs I've been viewing them all in the traditional perspective rather than looking for any Okoyes. In my mind, 94hp is worth about one extra level of MS, so if you were thinking about rating a RB 56ms then stay with that, don't knock him down to give 94hp. I'd rather have a 38rs/56ms/63hp back than a 63rs/50ms/94hp back. A player would have to have the perfect combination of being between two speed tiers in my mind and having a lot of power to be considered for the Okoye role. For example, if I'm putting about 12 (or whatever's proportional) 56ms and higher backs on the rom, and the 12th best guy in that group is a 250 lb power back, that would be my Okoye. I'll also use Okoye as a model for ratings that didn't actually appear on the original. I've rated guys on various roms with 94hp with 63rs/44ms, 56/44, 56/38, 50/38, etc. all the way down to 44/25 like the bunch in the original. (and a few 38/25)

 

With QB MS my methods have changed slightly over the years, but it's always based on rushing yards. It tends to be something like this:

 

<50 or <100yds plus a lot of sacks would be the few at 6ms. I aim to make this lower than the original, as I think it's a pretty severe handicap.

I start 19ms at 200yds if QB rushing totals for a given season were low because I try to have roughly the same proportion as the original. I like using 300 better, though. I just finished doing a 2002 season and my QBs ended up something like this:

 

200yds = 19ms

300 = 25 (Jeff Garcia)

400 = 31 (McNabb & McNair)

500 = 38 (no one)

600 = 44 (Culpepper)

700 = 50 (Vick)

 

Also a couple of backups got 25 or 19ms if they had a lot of rushing yards for the time they played.

[TheFes75]

I have never rated a TSB game, but I have done original TB ROMS. My first ROM I just used exact player models based on ranking all the players at the position on various statistics. ( i.e highest rated RB would get Bo's attributes, highest rated WR would get Rice's Attributes, Highest LB got LT's attributes. Etc...) I guess what changed for me in future ROMS was the stats I used to rate each player. For example I used to use total yards and YPC for RB's now I use Yards per game since some running backs may play fewer than 16 games. I also figure in total yards rushing and receiving with rushing weighted heavier, along with Yards per carry.

For All Pro players they get the top attributes at their position. For Pro Bowl players they get the next tier of good players. And then I rank each position on various stats to determine the best of the rest. I will also take into account if they are hall of fame players maybe in a down, or injury plagued year, and give them a boost in attributes somewhere.

Not perfect by any means, but by staying in the parameters of the original game you don't make a game that is out of balance.

[Knobbe]

My overall take is to rank seasons relative to each other as oppose to relative to other seasons unless you're making a multi year rom.

[keirre21]

I did rating for one TSB rom and I feel the biggest mistake I made was not keeping things in proportion to the original rom and not balancing each team. I rated each player individually (linemen included) and it made for quite a few super teams.

 

 

I also think that some guys should be left out of the ratings I.E. Bob Nelson, Bo Jackson, LT, Rice, Lonnie Young, Joe Montana.

 

Also there are tough choices you have to make when it comes to standing up DL. Most ppl don't know that Keith Millard, Dennis Byrd, and Scott Davis were actually DL. So when you're deal with a Geno Atkins (pre- injury), do you leave him at DL or do you stand him up at ILB? He has a better chance of affecting the game at ILB but is he really a 38/50/56/69 LB? Not Really but if I leave him at DL, I need to really put him at 75 HP in order for me to have a big impact on the game due to the 25 HP difference needed for a popcorn.

 

Offensively is different as MS is the ruling factor. I think you sometimes have to say "**** it" and rate a fast player, in real life, slow because there's nothing you can do to combat his effectiveness at a high MS. I've always felt Sam Graddy was the most underrated player on the original ROM. The Raiders' QB low PC might cause more drops but with a decent PC QB he's a real weapon.

 

 The question becomes "can this guy/unit duplicate his/their real life effectiveness at his given attributes?"  Rusell Wilson is a polarizing figure when it comes to editing a rom. Given what he's asked to do with the Seahawaks, does he really need to be anything more than 25 MS 44 PS 44PC? Same thing with Josh Gordon, I think he's closer to Willie Gault than Drew Hill or Andre Rison

 

Also, I won't need to give Kaepernick, RG III (when healthy),Newton, Manziel and Vick anywhere close to 56 MS b/c of their mobility. I'm sure 31 or 38 MS will suffice to duplicate their scrambling capabilities. Along the same lines Richard Sherman doesn't need to be Haddix to be effective, He's likely a  Mayhew with 50 HP.  Seattle's defense doesn't need to be the original ROM 49ers or Giants but maybe they have a 3 to 4- 50 RP defenders to duplicate the swarming nature of their defense.

 

32 team roms gives you more room to spread out talent but it often results in more stacked teams than anything else.