Power play % and other thoughts

[dkrause71]

Simon,

Power Play
I know this has been mentioned before but please get the power play % down. I especially feel the defensemen score way too often on the power play. I have tested with high and low goals slider settings. I have done tests with lowering all the SC in the league and so on and the power plays just run a solid 5-7% high.

Another issue is the PP % is raising the lower i put the goal slider. You would think it would drop just like the goals per game does but it hasn't. I don't know why but when i lower the goals slider the PP % increases (it does between 35-60 at least, it didn't at 99 and 0). The goals per game doesn't but when i raise the goal slider to 60- the PP tends to be closer to 22% but of course the PPG is alot higher. Below is a chart of what i am talking about.

Here are my latest sims with goal slider- everything else is the same for all sims. shots is at 50 if it matters.
goal slider 20- PP% was 29%
goal slider 30- PP% was 27%
goal slider 40- PP% was 26%
goal slider 50- PP% was 23%
goal slider 60- PP% was 21%
goal slider 70- PP% was 20%
goal slider 80- PP% was 21%

I am using version. 0.9.9.9



Other thoughts
My very high SC guys do not seem to hit the goals leaderboard often for my liking. Actually, the very high PA to SC guys like Adam Oates seem to more than i would like. I don't have a guess as too why. Oates is on a line with Neely who has very high SC and Oates is shooting more and averaged less minutes per game.

Endurance seems to run high. My EN ratings are lower than the PDF on this site recommends but the forwards would play 26 minutes or so if i let them. The high in the NHL last year was 22-23. No a huge issue with fatigue settings. Just something i noticed.

I would like to see a little more variety in attendance based on winning and star power- i have all the teams stadium seating the same, same prices- the sharks who were first in the league drew 80.08%, the caps who were last were 78.58%, Detroit with the most star power was 77.10%.


The PP% is the big one to me. The goals leaderboard is hit and miss with the guys i want. The endurance thing can be controlled with fatigue settings, the attendance i would like to see tweaked if you can.

If others can test, that would be great.

Thanks

[SimonT]

The V2 been available for more that 6 months and you are asking me to change this at the 2-4 weeks before the final release!

[jwr38]

Simon are you still fixing your sim engine or has it gone to final? As I making the player creator I have found enough bugs and oddities that it would keep you busy for at least a few more months but I don't want to waste my time explaining them all if the engine is no longer going to change.

Version 2 so far is so random, even when I set it up with everything on the same level with no coaches or moral, set of the sths defaults, I can't get any results that are close to the same over a 10 year sim (with no changes to the team, age, skills, coach). I have created so many players and ran so many seasons but for a person who sees patterns pretty easy I am having a hard time finding any. I get top players not being top players. top teams one season win the conference while the next they come last . It has given me so many random results that I am finding it hard to move forward.

[Violent Ed]

Simon are you still fixing your sim engine or has it gone to final? As I making the player creator I have found enough bugs and oddities that it would keep you busy for at least a few more months but I don't want to waste my time explaining them all if the engine is no longer going to change.

Version 2 so far is so random, even when I set it up with everything on the same level with no coaches or moral, set of the sths defaults, I can't get any results that are close to the same over a 10 year sim (with no changes to the team, age, skills, coach). I have created so many players and ran so many seasons but for a person who sees patterns pretty easy I am having a hard time finding any. I get top players not being top players. top teams one season win the conference while the next they come last . It has given me so many random results that I am finding it hard to move forward.

Randomness is good. Why want to have the same results years after year? TO me that would be quite BORING.

[SimonT]

Randomness is good. Why want to have the same results years after year? TO me that would be quite BORING.

Totally agree!!

[dkrause71]

I sure hope keeping so much randomness isn't the plan with v2. I really don't need to see my 96 SC Brett Hull, 99 Mario, 92 Luc, etc, etc rarely ever make the top 10 in goals but Neal Broten or Craig Janney type at 60 often there. I am all for some randomness but i way too often see the highest rated players play so-so and decent players dominate. I see some of the lowest rated teams win the division, and the highest rated teams in the lottery. V1 is alot less random in these areas then v2 is.

For example- i just simmed a season. A dreadful talent wise team wins the western conference but two of the best teams are in the lottery in the west. This kind of stuff just happens way too often in v2. I get surprise teams and players but i just don't understand the 95 red wings, stars and avs finishing near the bottom while the Mighty Ducks win the conference with players who couldn't even start for most teams.

Its almost like the top players have some sort of penalty build in to limit their scoring.

Again, i am not asking for no randomness. Just would just like to see less. I don't think its really far off. Just want to see the ratings factor more.



** Note -I do want to state that some of these issues could just be the PP% being screwy. If Simon can fix that then you would see much lower rates, which means some questionable players would have less goals and teams records could be less random. I also tend to see much better stats with the goal slider lower- like 35 area.

[Violent Ed]

I bet if there was a line matching option, you would see different results. But without it, top lines ALWAYS play top lines. That would figure into a players production one would have to figure. Playing against a top line always I think will knock a players production down some. I have noticed that line two is pretty productive, but they are playing a lesser line then the top lines. And really there are no guarantees a player with 99sc is gonna always be at the top. Thats just ridiculous to even think that.

I love this sim. It is BY FAR the superior product on the market.

My 2 cents.

[dkrause71]

I bet if there was a line matching option, you would see different results. But without it, top lines ALWAYS play top lines. That would figure into a players production one would have to figure. Playing against a top line always I think will knock a players production down some. I have noticed that line two is pretty productive, but they are playing a lesser line then the top lines. And really there are no guarantees a player with 99sc is gonna always be at the top. Thats just ridiculous to even think that.

I love this sim. It is BY FAR the superior product on the market.

My 2 cents.

Clearly you didn't read my post- I said those guys (99sc) are rarely in the top 10 in hundreds of sims. I didn't say anything about always at top.

Love the game all you want, but it has some issues. Some are obvious like PP %, most are smaller. I clearly wouldn't be wasting my time testing a game i didn't like and want to see improved.

Considering Simon in 0.9.6 lowered shot block to high SC players shows this was a problem in the past. I feel its still a mild problem.

You point is out of nowhere- I wasn't pointing out that iffy second liners were scoring all the goals. I was pointing out that the highest SC rarely make the top 10. Most the goal leaders are line 1 guys in my sims for the record. Just again- rarely see the top SC guys on the top 10


**Note- All my posts are really tied to what i said in the first one, which Simon already looked at and probably decided what he can use and not use by now. I said my peace on what i feel could/should be tweaked and that's as far as i can take it. Just like any customer, I'll download the new version. If i like it- I'll use it and recommend to others. Like i said in the first post, I feel PP % and attendance variety are most important. I also feel the high SC guys tend to underachieve most the time. A little less randomness in standings would likely occur with those changes anyway.

I'll see you guys when the next version is out. I'll find out then what made it in or not.

[jwr38]

I agree that there is far to much sim randomness in V2. I to am testing to make it as good as I can. I want to have fun playing in STHS, not have a frustrating experience on the account of the sim engine.

I have tried to set my tests up without as many random factors as I can such as;
- no coach
- no morale
- same schedule for each sim
- no injuires
- no suspensions
- same players and same lines
- save and loading so always the same setting. there is no role over.

I get nothing close to consistency. I get teams that won the year before coming last the next year. One year they may be the top scoring team in the league, the next the bottom. I expected to find much closer results at this stage. Each season I get a huge range of players who lead the league. There is no consistency. I can't create a good base for the players in the player creator if even the best players don't preform. If there is so much randomness before I add the follow features what happens when a GM start sending in lines making trades. It feels as of right now that the sim plays the game and the GM is just along for the ride. I expected that the randomness should come from how the GM plays the game, not the sim.

I can post the seasons for people to look at to make their own conclusions.

[Phx27]

There's nothing wrong with a little randomness, because poor teams on paper do exceed expectations from time to time, just as good teams underachieve. Same goes for players. However, that kind of thing should be the exception, not the rule, and it seems with this version of the sim, randomness dominates over skill. If randomness rules in this version of the sim, what is the point of running a team? Why build a good team when your team is just as likely to finish at the top of the conference as it is at the bottom because the sim is so random? If GMs have so little control over the way their teams perform, why should they even invest time into their team?

In my league, using V1 of the sim, it was mainly the same group of guys near the top of the scoring leaders for the first 5 seasons. Guys dropped out of that group, and guys joined it. But the core stayed the same. Occasionally there was a surprise. From time to time a guy would have an exceptional season and then go back to being good. Or vice versa, one or two of those guys would have a bad season and underperform. That's realistic. However, with V2, none of those guys are at the top of the scoring leaders. It's all players that have been average performers, at best. It's not realistic for the top scoring leaders to change at random from year to year. If highly rated players do not, on average, perform close to their skill level, what is the point of even having these ratings? Why trade for a player with a high SC rating or a good amount of goals to his name to help your team's offense, when a player with 70 SC and just a few goals in the past is just as likely to add the same amount of offensive boost? If this happens from time to time, then that's fine because trades are always a risk on whether the player will fit in, but again, it should be the exception, not the norm. If we can't rely on ratings, and we can't rely on past performance, then trading just becomes completely pointless due to the random nature of player and team performance.

Line match ups also don't seem to have that much of an effect, from what I have noticed. Underachieving top players don't seem to do any better when matched up with 2nd and 3rd lines.

[Violent Ed]

To me its a simple as this.

You like the sim, buy it.

You don't like the sim, don't buy it

BUT don't buy it then proceed to rip it apart. That's not fair to Simon.

Bottom line, I like it, bought it, and will continue to use it. You don't like it, don't buy it, don't use it.

[jwr38]

To me its a simple as this.

You like the sim, buy it.

You don't like the sim, don't buy it

BUT don't buy it then proceed to rip it apart. That's not fair to Simon.

Bottom line, I like it, bought it, and will continue to use it. You don't like it, don't buy it, don't use it.

so you are saying that anything you buy should be 100% ready to go even when it is in beta? You are saying if we are finding things that are not working properly we should just shut up and not let Simon know? How does that help him create a great sim? A developer can't see everything.

[Violent Ed]

To me its a simple as this.

You like the sim, buy it.

You don't like the sim, don't buy it

BUT don't buy it then proceed to rip it apart. That's not fair to Simon.

Bottom line, I like it, bought it, and will continue to use it. You don't like it, don't buy it, don't use it.

so you are saying that anything you buy should be 100% ready to go even when it is in beta? You are saying if we are finding things that are not working properly we should just shut up and not let Simon know? How does that help him create a great sim? A developer can't see everything.

Talk about misunderstanding.

I in no way said you should stop reporting bugs and the such, but this discussion to me seems like it wants Simon to rewrite the sim itself. I think some of you are expecting real world results from something that can't ever reproduce that. To me it's pretty close. Sure there is randomness, but life contains randomness. There are no guarantees.

This is the last I will speak on it.

[jwr38]

rewrite the sim? where has anyone even come close to saying that? people here have even compared version 2 to version 1! All some are asking for is less randomness, much like version 1. So the engine that is in currently must be working well but it only requires some tweaking. What is wrong with expecting that players with skills in the 90 to preform like players with skill in the 90's? As of right in the tests that i have been doing AND version 2 leagues that I am in there has been very little connection between skill level and points that a player is putting up. What is the point in trading for a highly skilled player when when a lower skilled player generally could put up the same or better results? Consistancy is important to people who spend hours setting up leagues and running them. Consistancy is expected when GM's spend hours trading for better skilled players but with such a high randomness factor that it seems not to matter. same with the PP. I do expect that my high SC guys score more goals than my low SC guys. That is not happening. No one is expecting real life results, again you are reading into something that is not there.

again I will ask, Simon are you still working on the engine or staying much the same as now? If nothing more is going to change then I go from there.

[starfrit]

I agree with some things said in that topic. After completing my first full season with V2, I must admit too that there is too much randomness in the simulation. Unfortunatly, I can't point out anything precice because... it's too random. Some GM's complained about weird results all season long, like teams winning many games with only the default strategies, didn't see any of my top SC ratings leaders in the top etc. I too think this is something that should be checked out because there is no point of doing lines or trying to make the good trade if changes dosen't do anything good because of randomness.

But, saying there is a problem after making 20 test seasons isn't the best way to find these kind of problems, because if you use all the auto functions for your roster and lines, you may get 3 guys with high SC on the 1st line, and it's no secret that they won't be in the top scorers because they have all 33% chances of scoring a goal.

Another thing that should be checked out, shots on goal. I don't understand why I get games with over 95 shots by both teams when 90% of the games have 30-35 shots per teams