I have been trying to withhold judgement on 0.4.4 until I see more but I gotta say I liked 0.4.3 better. The problem with 0.4.3 was too many long TD plays but I think a lot of that was all the slooooow defensive players. Teams were starting to adjust. Now, well, I think it's "Alex Smith playing in 1963" football. 17/20, 163 yards, 16 points. Nobody is ever open, throw the checkdown. Ugh...

I appreciate your efforts Mr. JDB and I know it's a free game at this point. To me, if you could split the difference and allow a little more action that would be about right. I also think you (we) need to test these changes on more leagues before unleashing them on everyone. Or perhaps allow leagues to choose their game engine.

My two pesos.. thanks..

CM

Come join MFN-1! I'm always looking for people in there who will give feedback. We did have a second beta league but it died due to lack of users.

To your question, 0.4.5 is indeed addressing what you describe and hopefully will not take too much longer to be released.

in that case these leagues are still in .4.3 version so come join these if you like 4.3 better than 4.4
those leagues are : High Octane League (conference title game stage) , MFN 32 (wildcard round) , Cust 21 (16th week) , Fake Pigskin (15th week) , MFN 31 (15th week) , MFN 83 (14th week) , NBA League (14th week) , High School (14th week) , ANARCHY (13th week) , MFN 8 (13th week) , MFN 24 (13th week) , NCAA 2.0 (13th week) , NFL (12th week) , CUST 80 (11th week) , MFN 85 (9th week) , MFN 2 (8th week) , MFN 48 (8th week) , NCAA (Not Bryson10's league and 7th week ) , MFN 27 (6th week) , MFN 26 (5th week) , Big boys (5th week) , CUST 79 (3rd week) , College football (preseason 1) and Maddox football League (free agency)

First, I want to say that I am very appreciative of what Mr. JDB has done - this is a great little distraction that I check in on for a few minutes every day.

I do like 4.4 better than 4.3 - maybe I'm crazy, but I prefer 1960's NFL better than 7on7 games. I think the exploits is what soured me most with 4.3. Having TE's with 300 yards receiving was ridiculous, and if a QB chucked it deep 40-60 times a game, they would be beaten to a pulp by week 3.

If I had my choice, I would like to see what 4.2 resembled with ability to run the ball more effectively. Although, a lot of the fun with this game is trying to figure out effective strategies.

This isn't actually the problem with 0.4.4. The problem is that QBs are taking too long to recognize the open WR and throw them the ball, which is the main issue being addressed in 0.4.5.

From what I've seen, 0.4.5 will address the main problems with 0.4.4, and it should also address the lingering problem of the all blitz 2 man defense from 0.4.2 and before. In the limited testing that I did with it, it was obvious that you could create an offensive game play that would scorch a defense that overused man blitz 2 plays by specifically throwing at the blitz.

This should be a deterrent from overusing those defensive game plans. Forcing defenses to adjust or get burned badly by QBs throwing to WRs in one-on-one coverage with no safety help will also help balance out the running game as well.

Just finished a 16-13 game where the opposing QB completed 36 out of 38 attempts. My QB completed 30 out of 39, both had less than 280 yds. Combined, that would be the NFL record for competion % in a game, and most likely, would be the least passing yards for 66 total completions in a game. Sorry, but the 4.4 "simulation" has moved much farther away from the game it is trying to simulate in IMHO. I understand that it's easy to get the code/algorithms where a good balance between too many long completions and now too many short completions is achieved, but 4.4 is far from that balance. The complaint about heavy blitzing, which was prevalent in 4.1 & 4.2 was addressed in 4.3, where coverage defenses were more utilized in balance with blitzing and "hot reads" became a deterrent. And.. if you want to get more diverse defensive play calling, make it mandatory to have 30 active plays and a minimum of each play being used at least twice per game, auto'd by the coach. Same as the roster requirements where the AI kicks in if your roster exceeds 53 or your salary cap goes negative. Here's the link to the stat page for the game ... https://dfl.myfootballnow.com/box/2517
Also, had a preseason game today where the opposing QB completed 24 of 33 for a total of -3 yards. Aint that great. I understand that most do not want "Madden" type passing stats with more long pass completions than what is common for RL NFL pro football. I agree with that also, but the game has gone way too far in the other direction. Hopefully, the "fix" for QBs taking too long to make a throwing decision, as setherick mentioned, will get the passing game more balanced and realistic. Would like to see a lot less throws to the RBs in the flats and league stats where WRs are the leading yardage producers as opposed to TEs & RBs dominating the category. Ive noticed a trend in team owners moving their best WR to WR2 & 3 and RB and/or TE to try and get more production out of them, as opposed to 1 or 2 catches per game for less than 30 yards or less total from the WR1 position.

Very well written post but ick on enforcing using all 30 Defensive Plays.

Perhaps the game has changed enough but up until now good luck playing 'Whack-a-Mole' on ensuring that you're not getting decimated by certain defensive plays as you progress through a season. It'd be nearly impossible to not constantly watch as you know a D play(s) which is exposed gets hit for Long TDs and there's nothing you can do about it.

But, heck, maybe v4.4 has stripped that all away and it wouldn't be an unstoppable turnstile of TDs. lol

So I hate to be that guy, but these all sound like game planning problems or complaints. Yes, there is a problem right now with QB decision making, but create a game plan that throws to the RB 90% of the time, what do you expect?

As far as moving WRs around the field or dropping them in the backfield, most of us that are active game planners have been doing that for multiple releases. There are a bunch of plays where you can isolate a WR against a weaker defender and rack up yards. This isn't really a new thing. And, for what it's worth, NFL teams do it all the time. The difference in MFN is that we don't have motion plays, so we just override positions.

I guess point is that 0.4.5 will fix the overt problems with 0.4.4, but people still have to game plan in order to be successful. Although default playbooks in 0.4.5 test sims have had WRs leading in yards, and a mix of WRs, RBs, FBs, and TEs leading in receptions, so the roster only leagues may balance out more, especially since the default weights used in the test sim leagues in alpha are not used by most players.

I have to lean towards sethrick on this one. I've only played two in season games on 0.4.4. Although my QB has hit on 81% of his passes this season (vs. 60% lifetime), his yds per attempt, 8+, which is on par with his lifetime numbers. In fact, on offense, I've only mildly tweeted my game plan from .0.4.3 in terms of pass distance distribution. Admittedly, the data is not a lot.

The original release was more fun to play than the latest. sad...