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Revert the Penalty Applied to Short Passes

By setherick
10/21/2016 6:18 am
Until the OL blocking code is fixed, the accuracy penalty applied to short passes needs to be reverted. Since QBs take pressure on every play, they are getting double penalties applied to short passes. And since short passes are one of the ways to prevent from getting sacked by underweight DEs every play, you've taken away the one advantage an offense had over the blitz.

Re: Revert the Penalty Applied to Short Passes

By WarEagle
10/21/2016 7:02 am
There's a penalty for short passes?

That doesn't make any sense. If anything I would think there would be a boost since, you know ... these are short passes.

Better yet, instead of a penalty or boost, how about let the QB's accuracy rating have an impact? If he has a high accuracy rating, he should be an accurate passer.

Or does the penalty apply to the receivers?

Geeze. Might as well change all the attribute names to Attribute A, Attribute B, etc., since none of them actually do what you would think they should.
We can all just guess and speculate about what they do just like we are now, but without the frustration of actually thinking we have a clue.
To make it even more interesting they could change every season also. Wouldn't that be fun? As soon as we think we have it figured out...BAM...Attribute A is now Attribute E.
Why would you ever think pass blocking is important for an OT? It's strength of course! BAM...now it's speed! BUWAHAHAHA!!!

Re: Revert the Penalty Applied to Short Passes

By setherick
10/21/2016 7:18 am
There is a distance penalty applied to short passes now. It was supposed to have been applied all along, but it was never applied to short passes only medium and long ones. I agree that it doesn't make any sense. It doesn't make any sense to have a distance penalty applied to any pass within 20 yards and then only minor penalties applied elsewhere. I'm sure it was a bandaid fix at one point because QBs were too accurate. Except now, QBs have accuracy penalties for being underpressure, not knowing the plays, not having crowd noise, playing a night game (this is where the sarcasm font starts, I don't think this is an actual penalty), playing with their helmet on, stepping on to the field, and being alive.

The most accurate QB is the one that has 100 scramble and 50 accuracy and arm. Tim Tebow would be an all pro in the game. Peyton Manning would be riding the pine.
Last edited at 10/21/2016 7:20 am

Re: Revert the Penalty Applied to Short Passes

By Tecra031
10/21/2016 7:21 am
Are both of you referring to MFN-1 teams or to other leagues?

Re: Revert the Penalty Applied to Short Passes

By setherick
10/21/2016 7:23 am
Tecra031 wrote:
Are both of you referring to MFN-1 teams or to other leagues?


All leagues. It came with the new "upgrade" to pass blocking (cf Underweight DEs thread for how well that worked).

Re: Revert the Penalty Applied to Short Passes

By jdavidbakr - Site Admin
10/21/2016 8:41 am
Here is how a pass is thrown in MFN (after the decision to throw to a receiver has been made):

First the best location for the ball to arrive (in 3D space) is chosen. Based on the location of the players nearby as well as the defenders in the path of the ball (which, depending on the QB's FOV attribute, he may or may not see), as well as the arm strength of the QB (to cap the velocity with which he can throw the ball), the optimal 3D launch vector is chosen. Then an error is generated based on his accuracy, play experience, fatigue, his movement (low scrambling = poorer accuracy when on the run), whether a defender is in his face, and distance the ball must travel. Then the velocity and angles are adjusted using a normal distribution, with a greater standard deviation with a higher error rate, and the ball is launched in that direction.

Before I added the distance penalty, long passes were actually more accurate than short passes. Remember that a long pass also gives the receiver more time to adjust to the flight path of the ball, so a pass with a medium amount of error would be incomplete on a short pass but could easily be completed on a long pass - that translated to long passes being much more effective than short passes in early versions of the game. Basically, the distance penalty is less of a penalty and more of a reduction in error as the pass distance gets shorter. In 0.3, the penalty reduction was almost at zero for passes less than 10 yards, meaning you could put your kicker in at QB and he would do well throwing all short passes. The update made it where you really need to have at least some pass accuracy skill in order to throw a pass accurately. (Of course, the normal distribution means that everyone has at least a small chance of throwing a perfect pass on any play)

Re: Revert the Penalty Applied to Short Passes

By setherick
10/21/2016 9:28 am
jdavidbakr wrote:
Then an error is generated based on his accuracy, play experience, fatigue, his movement (low scrambling = poorer accuracy when on the run), whether a defender is in his face, and distance the ball must travel.


accuracy -- should carry a lot more weight than it currently does

play experience -- shown to be difficult to obtain quickly enough to make an impact

fatigue -- no way of tracking this over the course of the game, no mechanics for how it works QBs ever discussed

his movement (low scrambling = poorer accuracy when on the run) -- QBs are almost always under pressure so this is now the most important skill for a QB until pass blocking is fixed

whether a defender is in his face -- will almost always be the case until pass blocking is fixed; needs to be turned off until pass blocking is fixed

distance the ball must travel -- needs to be turned off until pass blocking is fixed

Since I don't have a full change log of when and why development decisions were made, my best guess is that QB accuracy became so complicated because QBs were too accurate. But this doesn't account for the fact that WR Courage + Catch attributes may actually be overpowered compared to DB Punish attributes, which makes me thing that a lot of this complication in QB accuracy was unnecessary at the time or, at least, didn't account for all the root causes.

This post also proves my argument that a high scramble QB with a big arm who throws long every down is the only way to play right now. He doesn't even need to be accuracy since that attribute will be so reduced by the time he throws the ball.
Last edited at 10/21/2016 9:39 am

Re: Revert the Penalty Applied to Short Passes

By setherick
10/21/2016 3:15 pm
jdavidbakr wrote:

1) First the best location for the ball to arrive (in 3D space) is chosen. Based on the location of the players nearby as well as the defenders in the path of the ball (which, depending on the QB's FOV attribute, he may or may not see), as well as the arm strength of the QB (to cap the velocity with which he can throw the ball), the optimal 3D launch vector is chosen.

2) Then an error is generated based on his accuracy, play experience, fatigue, his movement (low scrambling = poorer accuracy when on the run), whether a defender is in his face, and distance the ball must travel. Then the velocity and angles are adjusted using a normal distribution, with a greater standard deviation with a higher error rate, and the ball is launched in that direction.


Looking at this again. If I'm reading the logic of this correctly, then accuracy really has little to do with how accurate your QB is since all it does is potentially negate a penalty for bad ball placement.

Re: Revert the Penalty Applied to Short Passes

By jdavidbakr - Site Admin
10/21/2016 3:25 pm
setherick wrote:
Looking at this again. If I'm reading the logic of this correctly, then accuracy really has little to do with how accurate your QB is since all it does is potentially negate a penalty for bad ball placement.


The penalty is relative to the QB accuracy. It's just a multiplier on the error that derived from the previous steps.

Re: Revert the Penalty Applied to Short Passes

By setherick
10/21/2016 3:31 pm
jdavidbakr wrote:
setherick wrote:
Looking at this again. If I'm reading the logic of this correctly, then accuracy really has little to do with how accurate your QB is since all it does is potentially negate a penalty for bad ball placement.


The penalty is relative to the QB accuracy. It's just a multiplier on the error that derived from the previous steps.


It's a penalty relative to the accuracy? So to use as simple of an example as possible let's consider QB 1 and QB 2.

QB 1 - 100 Accuracy, 100 FOV
QB 2 - 50 Accuracy, 100 FOV

QB 1 - Accuracy Error = 1 x (Experience + Fatigue + Under Pressure + Space between player and defender + Movement)

QB 2 - Accuracy Error = 2 x (Experience + Fatigue + Under Pressure + Space between player and defender + Movement)

So QB 2 has a larger accuracy error, but both QBs are starting from the same accuracy point. (If this is actually true, then my QB weights are way...way...way...off.)
Last edited at 10/21/2016 3:44 pm