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IMPORTANT: Play Removal Notice

By jdavidbakr - Site Admin
10/17/2022 7:06 am
Greetings, MFN community! I have had several reports of certain plays in the playbook that are un-defendable. This is an unfortunate nature of the way the game is built - where each player has their own independent autonomous logic independent of what the plays may or may not be. I've decided that the best action to maintain parity in the leagues is to remove those plays from the playbooks. The plays in question at this time are the OLB Flat Zone and the FB Dive.

What does this mean for you? If you have been gameplanning normally (have had 40 offensive and 30 defensive plays in your active playbook) you will simply notice that these plays have been removed and will be able to replace them in your playbook if they were there. If you have worked to have the minimum number of allowed plays in your playbook, on the other hand, you may be at risk of the AI resetting your entire gameplan.

This change will take place within the next 24 hours. Please take a minute to ensure that you have a full selection of offensive and defensive plays in your gameplan before then, and ideally remove these plays if you have them.

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In other news, I apologize for not being on the forums lately - I've been hard at work under the hood with improvements to the user interface which I hope to release soon. I have felt for a long time that the user experience as you navigate the website has been extremely sub par - it's had little design updates since the initial launch - and is especially difficult on mobile devices. I've made that my top priority before returning to work on the game engine itself; it's just been a beast of a project, as I'm sure you can imagine. So thank you for your patience as I've been trying to keep myself fully focused on this interface update.

And as always, thank you for playing MyFootballNow!

Re: IMPORTANT: Play Removal Notice

By BleastMlode
10/17/2022 7:21 am
Thanks JDB, excited for the UI update.

Would it be possible to roll out this play selection update between seasons rather than at the next sim? This puts a lot of GMs in a tough situation if their team and gameplan were built around these plays.

I'm hoping we'll get some play execution updates in the future. Removing OLB flat Zone helps I guess, but what we really need is optimized offensive man beater plays and zone beater plays to keep this game a chess match (which it should be) vs a contest of who can spam the few good plays the most.
Last edited at 10/17/2022 7:22 am

Re: IMPORTANT: Play Removal Notice

By Bruno77
10/17/2022 7:51 am
jdavidbakr wrote:
Greetings, MFN community! I have had several reports of certain plays in the playbook that are un-defendable. This is an unfortunate nature of the way the game is built - where each player has their own independent autonomous logic independent of what the plays may or may not be. I've decided that the best action to maintain parity in the leagues is to remove those plays from the playbooks. The plays in question at this time are the OLB Flat Zone and the FB Dive.

What does this mean for you? If you have been gameplanning normally (have had 40 offensive and 30 defensive plays in your active playbook) you will simply notice that these plays have been removed and will be able to replace them in your playbook if they were there. If you have worked to have the minimum number of allowed plays in your playbook, on the other hand, you may be at risk of the AI resetting your entire gameplan.

This change will take place within the next 24 hours. Please take a minute to ensure that you have a full selection of offensive and defensive plays in your gameplan before then, and ideally remove these plays if you have them.

-----

In other news, I apologize for not being on the forums lately - I've been hard at work under the hood with improvements to the user interface which I hope to release soon. I have felt for a long time that the user experience as you navigate the website has been extremely sub par - it's had little design updates since the initial launch - and is especially difficult on mobile devices. I've made that my top priority before returning to work on the game engine itself; it's just been a beast of a project, as I'm sure you can imagine. So thank you for your patience as I've been trying to keep myself fully focused on this interface update.

And as always, thank you for playing MyFootballNow!


Also, is this announcement going to be posted in all leagues? I wouldn't have known about this except for someone else posting the link to this league in a Discord server.

Edit: I'm a dumbass who thought this was somehow just posted in one league. My bad JDB.
Last edited at 10/17/2022 7:55 am

Re: IMPORTANT: Play Removal Notice

By setherick - League Admin
10/17/2022 7:54 am
I'll be updating my database to show passing plays against all other defenses in response to this change.

Re: IMPORTANT: Play Removal Notice

By jdavidbakr - Site Admin
10/17/2022 10:20 am
BleastMlode wrote:
Would it be possible to roll out this play selection update between seasons rather than at the next sim? This puts a lot of GMs in a tough situation if their team and gameplan were built around these plays.


Unfortunately (and honestly the reason I haven't acted sooner) there is no mechanism in the system right now to allow me to remove plays from a single league or make a change like this between seasons - the playbooks are all global across every league.

Re: IMPORTANT: Play Removal Notice

By Drakothonic
10/17/2022 10:48 am
JDB I truly wish that you would've announced this with a little more time than 1 day. I am in a league right now where I'll have a playoff game immediately after this change. My (and maaaany others) defenses are built on OLB Flat Zone. Making this change quickly and hastily without any warning creates a severe parity imbalance between anyone who has familiarity experience in other defensive plays other than OLBFZ vs those who have fully taken advantage of the mechanic.

I wish you would've thought about communication timelines prior to just deciding to do it on a 24-hour whim. I'm fine with the change, but your haste to push it out in one day after this issue has been present for months and managers have changed their teams and game prep styles around these plays is upsetting and decently off-putting. I hope you'll consider this in the future before rushing through decisions in the future. Communication matters, and the lack of communication here is blatant.

Re: IMPORTANT: Play Removal Notice

By Legendruthless
10/17/2022 10:51 am
jdavidbakr wrote:
BleastMlode wrote:
Would it be possible to roll out this play selection update between seasons rather than at the next sim? This puts a lot of GMs in a tough situation if their team and gameplan were built around these plays.


Unfortunately (and honestly the reason I haven't acted sooner) there is no mechanism in the system right now to allow me to remove plays from a single league or make a change like this between seasons - the playbooks are all global across every league.


Is it possible to give us a date further out to have our changes done by? Say something like November 1st? This would give owners a couple of weeks to make their changes. I personally am going to have to drop a few teams to put in the time to make changes to my game plan. Changing my defense will be easy because it is just one play. My offense will be the true change. I planned my offense completely around beating the flat zone. This will take tons of effort to change this on all my teams.

Re: IMPORTANT: Play Removal Notice

By jdavidbakr - Site Admin
10/17/2022 11:42 am
I'm willing to wait for, say, a week, if you can convince me that this is the best way to handle it. What I don't want to happen is to have a week of games where people who were unaware of this as an exploit try to take advantage of it and make the next week's worth of games a wild west. I chose to keep the timeline extremely short because it seems to me that if you are taking advantage of the exploit you are kind of violating the integrity of the game overall, and you will not really be effected by it if you're gameplans are well balanced. But I'm open to hearing arguments that I'm overstating that.

Re: IMPORTANT: Play Removal Notice

By Legendruthless
10/17/2022 11:51 am
jdavidbakr wrote:
I'm willing to wait for, say, a week, if you can convince me that this is the best way to handle it. What I don't want to happen is to have a week of games where people who were unaware of this as an exploit try to take advantage of it and make the next week's worth of games a wild west. I chose to keep the timeline extremely short because it seems to me that if you are taking advantage of the exploit you are kind of violating the integrity of the game overall, and you will not really be effected by it if you're gameplans are well balanced. But I'm open to hearing arguments that I'm overstating that.


Any time will help owners adjust game plans. It is appreciated.

The issue isn't with the Flat Zone play itself however. But there seems to be a bug with play familiarity when it comes to non-blitzes on defense. Removing Flat Zone I don't think will solve things in the long run. Most teams are just going to replace it with another defensive play and run it 40-50 times a game until they gain the overpowering familiarity with the play.

I believe this was posted in the bug box if I am not mistaken. The best thing to do would be to put an overuse on all defensive plays, not just blitzes. I understand that will probably take more work.

All that's happening at the moment with the removal of Flat Zone is causing everyone who used it to switch to another play for now. Their defenses will suffer for now but eventually won't. I have seen the 3-4 Normal Man Cover 1 be called 50 times a game and is just as dominant as the Flat Zone because of the familiarity.

This may need to be looked at for 4.7. Removal of FZ is fine for now given how much its been built up for everyone. Really owners who have been running other plays like 3-4 normal man cover 1 will be at a huge advantage once the removal of the plays happen.

Re: IMPORTANT: Play Removal Notice

By setherick - League Admin
10/17/2022 11:52 am
jdavidbakr wrote:
I'm willing to wait for, say, a week, if you can convince me that this is the best way to handle it. What I don't want to happen is to have a week of games where people who were unaware of this as an exploit try to take advantage of it and make the next week's worth of games a wild west. I chose to keep the timeline extremely short because it seems to me that if you are taking advantage of the exploit you are kind of violating the integrity of the game overall, and you will not really be effected by it if you're gameplans are well balanced. But I'm open to hearing arguments that I'm overstating that.


I think this is a change that you just make. It's going to change game plans regardless. And if your not balancing your game plan that's on you.

From my database, getting rid of the play brings back passing over night.
Last edited at 10/17/2022 11:53 am