"How can a conversation about a “hack” go on for three pages and still not one person has actually said what the hack is?"

Wait. You actually expected them to come here and simply give away the advantage they enjoy? Really? Surprise!

What does surprise me though is how strident some people are, preaching "move on, folks, there's nothing to see here, leave us alone and don't rock the boat." I can't help but wonder why that is ...

Posted by S_Cottrell23 on 5/29/2024 8:44:00 AM (view original):
How can a conversation about a “hack” go on for three pages and still not one person has actually said what the hack is? All I’ve heard so far is that there are some coaches who are better than others. It honestly just sounds whiny at this point. If it’s so damn obvious, someone please say what it is. And don’t say “look at the top teams and you’ll see a trend” b/c of course you will, you’ll see that those teams are good!

Somebody please move the conversation forward or stop talking about it.

Agreed...I think I said basically the same thing on page two, yet here we are. In real life football, or any sport really, coaches are always looking for an advantage. And now and then, something new is introduced that no one can stop, until they adjust and adapt. Upsets happen in real life, they should here too, but overall talent wins most of the time. Good to great coaches can overcome that at times. It's really no different than here. I am an Iowa fan, so kind of know a thing or two about cheering for teams where their record exceeds their recruiting rankings.

Unless someone is manipulating the code, and can prove examples, again, nothing to see here. There's always those people in life who are going to ***** and moan, no matter what the subject is.

Posted by GoHawks2019 on 5/29/2024 11:38:00 AM (view original):

Posted by S_Cottrell23 on 5/29/2024 8:44:00 AM (view original):
How can a conversation about a “hack” go on for three pages and still not one person has actually said what the hack is? All I’ve heard so far is that there are some coaches who are better than others. It honestly just sounds whiny at this point. If it’s so damn obvious, someone please say what it is. And don’t say “look at the top teams and you’ll see a trend” b/c of course you will, you’ll see that those teams are good!

Somebody please move the conversation forward or stop talking about it.

Agreed...I think I said basically the same thing on page two, yet here we are. In real life football, or any sport really, coaches are always looking for an advantage. And now and then, something new is introduced that no one can stop, until they adjust and adapt. Upsets happen in real life, they should here too, but overall talent wins most of the time. Good to great coaches can overcome that at times. It's really no different than here. I am an Iowa fan, so kind of know a thing or two about cheering for teams where their record exceeds their recruiting rankings.

Unless someone is manipulating the code, and can prove examples, again, nothing to see here. There's always those people in life who are going to ***** and moan, no matter what the subject is.

No, I wouldnt expect anyone using a hack to disclose it. But I would expect that if so many people here are so sure that there is a hack, they would explain what it is. There have been multiple hacks or glitches in this game over the years, but in all of those cases, the person who brings them up actually explains what they are so that the WIS team can address them. There is absolutely no detail in these accusations except for "look at the top teams and youll see a theme."

Since Jeffn48's Tulane team has been brought up, I will address that specifically. I dont know Jeff personally, I only know that he is a great GD coach. I can also say that while he has beaten me plenty of times, I have also beaten him quite a few times as well. As have many other coaches. So, whatever he is doing, is certainly beatable. If he is cheating, I guess he is not great at cheating.

BTW, for anyone that has ever coached real life football or played at a high level, they would know that tinkering with things to manipulate a defense or offense is one of the most common and necessary parts of the game. So, Im not sure why people keep saying manipulating things to your advantage is cheating.

I have only played this game for 4 years. In my first year of playing, I did a ton of reading and research. I read back literal years into the message boards. There is a lot of info documented on how to play this game for anyone that has the time to invest in it. Just like anything in life, what you put into it is what you get out of it. This is not real life football, its a SIM video game. There are a lot of differences between this game and real football. Understanding that and looking for ways to make the dice rolls more advantageous for you is step #1 to success.

Sorry, I'm not buying the whole "hack" thing.

I'm not an elite coach. But, I have improved my abilities over the last several years. My secret to improved success is simply time and putting the work in..

I spent the time to study successful coaches that I wanted to emulate my offensive and defensive styles off of. I dissected as much as I could think of. Passing distribution by distance and position, personnel on the field by down/distance, tendencies, etc. I did a similar amount of work on defense. I still struggle to figure out that side of the ball, but I'm much better than I used to be.

I used all of that to build my "system", where I leverage every playbook and formation, and use them all based on certain circumstances. If I'm playing a team that leans heavily to throwing to RB's, I have a defense that tries to put my best players against his strength. If I sense you have a weakness at LB or DB, I'll target try to get the ball to my best skill players to exploit that match up. It doesn't work every time, but RL teams have off days, too.

While I put alot of time into building my system of depth charts, playbooks and formation options, I don't really spend much time gameplanning. I've set up a variety of defensive playbooks that I use, based on run/pass tendencies overall. When it comes to gameplanning, I just look at a few things, and set my defense. On offense, it's pretty much the same thing. I have several things I look at, which takes me 2-3 minutes, and then I roll with the playbook that I think will work best. I usually have 3-5 teams playing games on any given day, and I spend about 15 mins to set my gameplans total.

That's pretty much why I joined the Beast in Wilkinson. I am not as good as most the coaches in that conference, but I figured the best way to learn how they do things is to play against them all. I get my fair share of butt whoopings but I'm learning some things and trying to apply them to my way of coaching.

Posted by DeBeque on 5/28/2024 6:53:00 PM (view original):
Alright, thanks katz and harris. So the thinking is that the first test is play call vs play call, yielding a wide range of possible outcomes. Then, staying within that predetermined range of outcomes presumably team factors are tested, like offensive set vs defensive set modified by such things as total FIQ of the players on the field, fatigue and possibly other factors; then broad-brush tests like grossly compounded OL ratings vs grossly compounded DL ratings; and finally working its way down to some sort of individual vs individual tests. Okay, I accept your thinking and I'm gonna want to percolate that for a while.

And I apologize for hijacking the thread from the course set by the OP regarding the appearance of a powerful hack being employed in some circumstances. It does certainly seem that for the wildly skewed performances noted in the OP there would have to be influences not accounted for by the intended operation of the engine in determining play outcomes as described in this thread. The proper steps in determining a play outcome are simply too complex and too balanced to account for such consistently outlying performance. I sincerely hope WIS looks into this.

I guess we are in a thread within a thread. When the new (now old) version was being debated, I lobbied for the player ratings to be the determining factor. With better players ratings being the ultimate determinant for outcome modified then by Form IQ, team match-ups and gameplanning. I remember more comments on the + or - effects of the Def correctly countering the Off (medium pass coverage really undermining a medium pass route) and Off really overcoming poor Def. One other suggestion not taken was to have a "Neutral" Def setting so as not overcommit to the pass or run.

But we have what we have. I don't feel there is a "hack" being played here, but I do feel that mismatches can be made within the settings of the game that are difficult to counter with the settings we have available.

Posted by S_Cottrell23 on 5/29/2024 12:50:00 PM (view original):

Posted by GoHawks2019 on 5/29/2024 11:38:00 AM (view original):

Posted by S_Cottrell23 on 5/29/2024 8:44:00 AM (view original):
How can a conversation about a “hack” go on for three pages and still not one person has actually said what the hack is? All I’ve heard so far is that there are some coaches who are better than others. It honestly just sounds whiny at this point. If it’s so damn obvious, someone please say what it is. And don’t say “look at the top teams and you’ll see a trend” b/c of course you will, you’ll see that those teams are good!

Somebody please move the conversation forward or stop talking about it.

Agreed...I think I said basically the same thing on page two, yet here we are. In real life football, or any sport really, coaches are always looking for an advantage. And now and then, something new is introduced that no one can stop, until they adjust and adapt. Upsets happen in real life, they should here too, but overall talent wins most of the time. Good to great coaches can overcome that at times. It's really no different than here. I am an Iowa fan, so kind of know a thing or two about cheering for teams where their record exceeds their recruiting rankings.

Unless someone is manipulating the code, and can prove examples, again, nothing to see here. There's always those people in life who are going to ***** and moan, no matter what the subject is.

No, I wouldnt expect anyone using a hack to disclose it. But I would expect that if so many people here are so sure that there is a hack, they would explain what it is. There have been multiple hacks or glitches in this game over the years, but in all of those cases, the person who brings them up actually explains what they are so that the WIS team can address them. There is absolutely no detail in these accusations except for "look at the top teams and youll see a theme."

Since Jeffn48's Tulane team has been brought up, I will address that specifically. I dont know Jeff personally, I only know that he is a great GD coach. I can also say that while he has beaten me plenty of times, I have also beaten him quite a few times as well. As have many other coaches. So, whatever he is doing, is certainly beatable. If he is cheating, I guess he is not great at cheating.

BTW, for anyone that has ever coached real life football or played at a high level, they would know that tinkering with things to manipulate a defense or offense is one of the most common and necessary parts of the game. So, Im not sure why people keep saying manipulating things to your advantage is cheating.

I have only played this game for 4 years. In my first year of playing, I did a ton of reading and research. I read back literal years into the message boards. There is a lot of info documented on how to play this game for anyone that has the time to invest in it. Just like anything in life, what you put into it is what you get out of it. This is not real life football, its a SIM video game. There are a lot of differences between this game and real football. Understanding that and looking for ways to make the dice rolls more advantageous for you is step #1 to success.

Yeah we're basically saying the same thing, not an example of someone (user) using the hack, but an example of what it actually is and how it works.

In my opinion, if they aren't hacking the code, it's mostly not a true hack. They've just found a way to exploit the defense...that's football, as Kirk Ferentz would say. :)

The issue, as I see it, is the use of the word 'hack'. That makes it sound like a player is unbeatable.

While we've all seen guys who are great at this game, I've not yet seen one who is unbeatable.

I think what we are seeing is there are some coaches in this game that have developed a system and that system works very well for them. The system includes recruiting the right players for their system, developing those players during the season (knowing how to get them the most experience but yet still be competitive), as well as knowing how to best utilize their best players within their formations or how to attack each defense. I have talked to a number of great coaches and some will say the "set it and forget it" when it comes to game planning. Even Charlie (the great cebrake) admitted that he doesn't even look at WE when he is recruiting! The fact of the matter is, there are numerous ways to play this game and some may work for you but some may not! I venture to say that most great coaches have just kept dabbling with things until they came across something that seemed to work better for them than previous experiences. Until someone can prove otherwise, I will give those coaches their props!

I definitely think that there are some patterns within the game that can be exploited but I've not taken time to examine them very much.

For example, when I am playing a sim and have a drive that ends in a missed field goal, it feels like I will pick off one of their passes within the next 3-4 plays. Maybe that is just anecdotal, but it sure seems to happen a lot.

Also, when I am a much higher-rated team and the other team scores first, it is almost a guarantee that I score on the next drive.

It stands to reason that some people have figured out some patterns and can exploit them, but I wouldn't call that hacking.

I feel that Loophole is more appropriate than Hack and that is really the fault of flawed game software more than users.
They find the loophole(s), they use it/them.

Someone upthread mentioned how regardless of perceived hacks if you’re having fun then it’s ok and that’s correct.
I recently stopped because it wasn’t fun and I don’t miss it.

Posted by katzphang88 on 5/28/2024 4:05:00 PM (view original):

Posted by DeBeque on 5/27/2024 8:35:00 PM (view original):
Katzphang, I'm trying to make sense of this: "When this current update was being tested there was a big curfuffle about player ratings influence vs randomization of outcomes. As it turned out, the outcome "buckets" were stated to be determined first, then the second set of "buckets" would be the influence of the player ratings.
As I understood this it would mean - regardless of the player ratings involved the game would decide on the level of success - a long gain vs no gain or loss."

If "regardless of the player ratings," then based on WHAT?

What harris described is pretty close. As I remember the discussion on the question the response of what happens is - 1) the SIM determines from the selected play from the O gameplan whether the play will go or be stopped based on the settings of the O and D. 2) If it is a go - based on the settings it will be deposited randomly into a selected "bucket" of possible outcomes. So still no influences of team or player rating advantages. 3) Then - team comparisons are taken (say DL vs OL) this will be the first modification of the "bucket" result but will not change which "bucket" the result will occur. 4) Player vs player ratings will further modify the result to end up with the final yardage. I also thing that in #3 and #4 there are random occurrences which interject INT, fumbles, sacks etc.

So how does this relate to what happens? My guess - in relation to the OP observations are: If the O gameplan is 100% in one depth to pass, and the D gameplan does not cover that distance, completions will be higher. If even a marginal player has a mismatch (say a fast TE vs a slow LB) the yardage may reflect the difference.

It is all speculation, but this is close to what was discussed. The player ratings advantages were made secondary to the randomization of the game.

Your description is far better than mine. Very good!!!

Posted by jhunterz on 5/30/2024 1:23:00 PM (view original):
I think what we are seeing is there are some coaches in this game that have developed a system and that system works very well for them. The system includes recruiting the right players for their system, developing those players during the season (knowing how to get them the most experience but yet still be competitive), as well as knowing how to best utilize their best players within their formations or how to attack each defense. I have talked to a number of great coaches and some will say the "set it and forget it" when it comes to game planning. Even Charlie (the great cebrake) admitted that he doesn't even look at WE when he is recruiting! The fact of the matter is, there are numerous ways to play this game and some may work for you but some may not! I venture to say that most great coaches have just kept dabbling with things until they came across something that seemed to work better for them than previous experiences. Until someone can prove otherwise, I will give those coaches their props!

Sounds like coach Leach at WSU. IRL we should've complained that Leach was cheating when his no talent WSU teams went down to the wire at Auburn or routinely gave my Ducks a headache. The game should have some random results.

Posted by jhunterz on 5/30/2024 1:23:00 PM (view original):
I think what we are seeing is there are some coaches in this game that have developed a system and that system works very well for them. The system includes recruiting the right players for their system, developing those players during the season (knowing how to get them the most experience but yet still be competitive), as well as knowing how to best utilize their best players within their formations or how to attack each defense. I have talked to a number of great coaches and some will say the "set it and forget it" when it comes to game planning. Even Charlie (the great cebrake) admitted that he doesn't even look at WE when he is recruiting! The fact of the matter is, there are numerous ways to play this game and some may work for you but some may not! I venture to say that most great coaches have just kept dabbling with things until they came across something that seemed to work better for them than previous experiences. Until someone can prove otherwise, I will give those coaches their props!

I was going to post something but this is way better than what I would have said. That's the secret to the game. Except about the WE.

Posted by jasonfreeman on 6/6/2024 1:44:00 AM (view original):

Posted by jhunterz on 5/30/2024 1:23:00 PM (view original):
I think what we are seeing is there are some coaches in this game that have developed a system and that system works very well for them. The system includes recruiting the right players for their system, developing those players during the season (knowing how to get them the most experience but yet still be competitive), as well as knowing how to best utilize their best players within their formations or how to attack each defense. I have talked to a number of great coaches and some will say the "set it and forget it" when it comes to game planning. Even Charlie (the great cebrake) admitted that he doesn't even look at WE when he is recruiting! The fact of the matter is, there are numerous ways to play this game and some may work for you but some may not! I venture to say that most great coaches have just kept dabbling with things until they came across something that seemed to work better for them than previous experiences. Until someone can prove otherwise, I will give those coaches their props!

I was going to post something but this is way better than what I would have said. That's the secret to the game. Except about the WE.

+1. I've looked at jasonfreemans signed classes a few times and found recruits that I would not even make my consideration list. so obviously he's figured out something about growth/work ethic/potential that i don't know. meanwhile cebrake apparently doesn't even look at WE? lmao. many ways to attack the game and find your leverage.

i do think some people have a hard time getting over the hurdle of viewing it in terms of real life football. i've been around since the "hack" was to roster no QB because the punter would sub in as michael vick. if you look at it as irl football, you would never find the don't roster a qb edge