Premiership Coach

[blueboy0810]

Is there a list that I can join for beta testing? I’m happy to contribute any way I can in terms of ranking teams and players etc if that’s a requirement.

 

[DanielLaneDC]

You're a legend Grenville.

My footy game is going pretty well. I haven't actually ended up taking anything from PC2011 as it turns out (got about as far as getting it to compile then got busy and never went back), and I think that's appropriate because I think they're going to be fundamentally different experiences anyway. But this is the Premiership Coach thread so that's the last time I'll mention this.

So now I'm going to shift back into "fan of PCXX" mode.

I have STILL got my original save file that I started when I first played PC2011 and it's still going strong. Everytime I go back on a PC2011 binge every 6 or so months, I just play this save. Gold Coast are in 2094 now and have won 52 premierships. I have played every single game as real time match day. I'm really not sure if this is the oldest consistent save or not. I think it wouldn't be too difficult to sim all the way to 2094, but the distinguishing thing about this save is that I have lovingly played every single moment of it. Not a single season was simmed. Not a single game was skipped. Not a single team was assistant picked. Not a single draft was recruiter selected. Not a single contract was AI managed.

At the end of this, the main thing that I feel the game lacks is meaningful statistics. Top 10 lists just don't cut it for me. But for this, I've gone and made my own and that suits me well enough.

However, I'm going to try and raise some meaningful points about the state of the game that I play here in 2094.

1. I do not win every game, and certainly not easily. I won about 17 premierships in a row at one stage, and barely missed a grand final up until around the 2050s where the clubs all somewhat balanced out. While this took a while, it's frankly a whole other game when you get here.
2. Staff were the first to break. This is going to be the first of a few of these similar sounding issues. I simple cannot offer anyone enough money. Even the duds. The input just doesn't let me. For a while, I could get around this by letting the AI sign my staff. However, now, even the AI has given up trying to fit the staff expected salary into my weekly budget. Since the staff have all unanimously rejected my club, this means I no longer get the rich recruiting experience. To be honest, this wasn't too bad. I had to pick players off of their position, height, weight, age and agility, etc scores. I also use a "trick" which I'm not sure if it really works, where I go to the F/S area and make sure the list is ordered by potential descending. I've somewhat purposefully never tried to figure out if this does work or not. This whole point may have been a reason why the competition got stronger, but I don't think so, because I still did wonders on the trade table and just focused on ready made players more than youth.
3. Finances took a turn for the horrible. It pains me to say, but I regularly edit the .xml file of my club just so that I don't have the worst facilities imaginable. I cannot get the weekly allowance to stick, because the club just won't let me turn a negative weekly balance. I haven't got any staff. I have got over $400million in reserves but I can't pay within barely 30% on my facilities as is required to keep them level. The inputs let me put in the right values, but every week the game changes them for me back to small amounts. It's as if the club just won't let me lose money. As a result, if I get lazy, I get to watch those overalls decrease, and that's painful. Every other club in the game has A+ everything. However, I think this plays a major role in the equalisation of the comp. So it's a blessing and a curse.
4. Player contracts are no longer micro manageable. It's as simple as I simply cannot offer any player a contract worth more than $50million. So, over 5 years, that's $10mil a season. My good players are expecting upwards of $12mil. I have absolutely no trouble fitting them into the salary cap. But I just can't sign them for an extended amount of years anymore. The only way I can sign these players is by accepting what they want, which is working fine for me so far, but is definitely going to contribute to equilisation in the future, because...
5. In my opinion, the best way to succeed in this game is to front/back load contracts. I regularly end a season with my weakest 22 player 82+ rated, at least a couple 90s, 31 players signed for the following season and 70% of the salary cap free for that off season. This goes in tandem with...
6. Trading. Back loaded contract? Trade him for the last year, where 100% of the contract was loaded. Can't get a club to agree? Give them a draft pick and take all their aging verterans. All you have to do is check that their contracts are expiring, and simply don't renew them. What's better is you can sometimes even offload them individually to other clubs to get back more draft picks than you lost. All in all, you got a player for free for four seasons and ended up swapping him for draft picks. Granted, the picks aren't normally very good (40s) but this works because you only do this when the player is ~33yo in the last year of their contract. However, this isn't even the best way to get an advantage out of trading, because that's left for...
7. Signing as many preseason drafts as you have picks for. Since I've got so much cap space, I can use every single one of my preseason picks even if I've already got 39 players drafted. I think if I have 40 it doesn't let me, but it only seems to check at the start of the draft. Most other clubs only pick once if at all, but normally there are still a bunch of Excellent or at least Good rated players still available. The kicker, though, is that a lot of the time these are players I traded away for draft picks during the trade period that had just passed. It's scandalous.
   
   But to be honest, I did away with a lot of these techniques after trying them for a while because it's just not any fun if you're effectively cheating. I front load contracts only now, so I pay for the 5 years up front and then get 4 free years. This does wonders for building a salary cap advantage and keeping it. I also always make sure I use every bit of cap space, sometimes restructuring contracts that are set to expire the following season. This sometimes results in paying more overall, but lets me keep the advantage.
   
   
8. The match stats are all dead. Once every few seasons, a player from an opposition club will have a remarkable game where they did something like kick 17 goals. This is a great accomplishment on its own. But the game goes a step further and wants that accomplishment remembered not once, but up to 10 times, where week by week the accomplishment counts again as if it happened again. Really, it happened once, but now the top 10 goals kicked are 19 goals by Player A, 18 goals by Player B, 17 goals by Player C, 17 goals by Player C, 17 goals by Player C, 17 goals by Player C, 17 goals by Player C, 17 goals by Player C... you get the idea. This has happened to practically all of the match records, except now when I notice it happening I immediately save and quit so it stops, and I've manually cleared my match records to resolve some really ugly ones. It even happened to my own player once! He got 71 possessions, and that was outstanding, but he only did it once, despite what the game wants to believe!
9. Quirks of the real time match engine. I'm going to brush over this quickly. But in summary, to be honest, this is actually really charming and I kind of love it. It produces some really interesting scenarios sometimes and some feel good stories.
   1. Inside midfielders are the best LFPs the game has ever seen. Regularly kicking bags of 7. I had a player called E.Nother who kicked 1100 goals and had a Small and Tall Forward rating well below noticeable, but he was a 88 inside mid and practically nothing else. I loved imaging the commentators explaining "He's got E.Nother!". Another player of mine, similar, kicked 133 goals in a season as a 84 inside mid and not much else. Once I discovered this, instead of trading them I started keeping these sort of otherwise unversatile players as if they were my next Eddie Betts. It "feels" right too.
      
   2. Small defenders are the best forward flankers / wingers, and they're rare. It is so hard to find a good small defender rated over 75. I'm pretty sure I always have them all. But sometimes you find gems that are 84 rated small defenders, and good inside, and that's when you put them on the wing. 700+ possessions season after season.
   3. Tall forwards are the best midfielders. This is so much better than the small defenders, and much more exciting. They're also tricky to find, but S. Stuthridge is a good example. At his peak, he was an 84 in Small Forward, Tall Forward, Inside and Outside Mid. This made him an absolute ball magnet. He was the player to get 71 possessions, and in that game, he also kicked 6 goals on a forward flank. Later in his career he played rover as a 34yo, rated 74 in his highest rating and still knew how to collect 28 possessions a game. Freak.
   4. Opposision tall forwards can get on hot streaks and that's what kills you. When an opponent's key forward kicks 3-4 goals in the first quarter, I know I'm in for a management challenge. I can't swap anyone onto him to stop him. He will end up with 15 goals and I will struggle to win. It's electric.
10. Pretty sure I have never, ever actually had a player who was "called" a Small Forward. Do not rate them at all.

Anyway an hour later this is too much to keep going now I'm going to stop here. Great game Grenville and I still love every second of it.

 

[Simon_Nesbit]

You're a legend Grenville.

Awesome post DLDC - you earned my first like for over 12 months! (I'm not the most generous poster).

Regarding finances, this is probably an easy fix - some numbers are scaled for inflation, others are not. Either all scaled, or all flat should solve those issues.

Agree totally on the position rating not matching up with the gameplay outcome - the problem (as I mentioned to Ad way back when) is that the position rating is simply a 'label' used to simplify decisions. It's the underlying skills that truly affect the game - especially when playing live against simming.

Watching the games, you could actually see some exploits working - one you haven't mentioned is the tall defender/forward as a wingman - for whatever reason teams would often kick long to the wing for a one-on-one, and playing a marking player there (with defensive skills too) would usually result in either a mark, or spoiling and then winning the loose ball, as the computer picked short skinny runners on the wing.

 

[Grenville]

Thanks for the comments Daniel.
First up, i have to say that making something and then seeing someone spend that much time playing it (despite its plenty of flaws & shortcomings) is pretty humbling. Having struggled with depression over the years, along with demands of a young family and getting reestablished overseas, once i went back to work full time i found that i just didn't have the motivation to roll that effort into such a big project. In recent times I've found myself motivated again, and hearing a story like this reinforces it.

I'm sorry to say that theres not going to be a realtime sim in PC2019. I want to have another crack at it some time - and hope to bring in some people with skills to do it in 3D - but for now a simpler approach, and focus on quality and balance in core areas (player model, sim, contest logic etc) is what I'm after.

At some point soon i need to setup bag tracking so that i can log these and resolve as beta testing for PC2019 starts happening. So much has changed though that i think we need to replicate some of these in the new codebase to resolve.
Club finances i never felt great about and would like to do better in PC2019. I'm working on Free Agency and a few other things currently, but would like to get you involved in discussions on why the change that model to be better & more user friendly.
Expectation was that in PC2011 every value in the game got inflated. (theres one method that handles it, and a constant inflation rate that was based on the salary cap change over time, but sounds like reducing it would have helped a lot here.

Honestly didnt think of exploiting contract loading via trade. Can handle that in the AI logic, so your cheating days are over mate

Have touched on it a number of times, but player ratings + sim/contest logic are all completely reworked. Would like to get your feedback on that at some point also.

Not sure what was going on with the stats, but we'll look at that. Expanding beyond top 10's is definitely possible. Part of the challenge there is collecting the data to start with, which is needed to support it. Always on the look out for help with that side of things.

Cheers mate.

 

[Fizzler]

Grenville i think an interesting feature would be the option to start off unemployed. You’re able to do this in Football Manager which probably works because of all the leagues that are in FM, but if lower leagues are going to be playable (can you confirm this? I think I recall you saying it previously) then it woruld be able to solve the dilemma of not knowing which team to manage.
Also this would enable the possibility to do a 100 or 1000 year sim like what has been done for Football Manager. Would love to see what Port’s lineup in 2077 will look like

 

[Grenville]

Grenville i think an interesting feature would be the option to start off unemployed. You’re able to do this in Football Manager which probably works because of all the leagues that are in FM, but if lower leagues are going to be playable (can you confirm this? I think I recall you saying it previously) then it woruld be able to solve the dilemma of not knowing which team to manage.
Also this would enable the possibility to do a 100 or 1000 year sim like what has been done for Football Manager. Would love to see what Port’s lineup in 2077 will look like

Being able to coach in state leagues is on the roadmap, but wont make PC2019. Starting out unemployed could be added along with it. Its actually a pretty big change - lots will break if i did it now. Can be done though

 

[Fizzler]

Being able to coach in state leagues is on the roadmap, but wont make PC2019. Starting out unemployed could be added along with it. Its actually a pretty big change - lots will break if i did it now. Can be done though

This is exciting. I’m even more excited for it now. I started writing the below post before you replied and I’m still going to post it but I understand these would all be really difficult to implement
———————————————————————
Also a couple other suggestions. These ones would probably be harder to implement but would still be really cool. I would think they would take quite a few iterations of the game for it to be solid and be able to add these.

• Expansion teams

I am taking a leaf out of NBA 2K’s MyLeague here, but they give you the option to add up to 6 expansion teams per save. They have some preset designs but you can make your own team design if you want. I think if the game let you add up to 2 expansion teams whenever you want that would be cool. Perhaps even the option to kick a few teams out if you are so inclined.

• More of a CEO option

So rather than having a CEO mode, if we could have more of a role in what the whole club does that would be really cool. So if we could relocate them to a different city, upgrade training facilities and home stadium or even just move stadiums altogether. Or perhaps the boldest but hardest to implement, but the ability to merge teams.

• Ability to control multiple teams

This one is more to tie into the above and play the game your way. If you want to move Sydney back to South Melbourne but want to manage the Crows for example, you could control them both, and then deselect the Swans after you move them this would be useful.

• Custom leagues

This option was actually in Australian Football Coach which I played a lot for a while. There was an option to start a league in different countries and they’d auto fill with random players and have whatever number of teams you specified be named after the biggest cities in that country, but you were able to change their names and colours if you wanted to. I think being able to do this would be cool as you could manage your local league. From memory I’m not sure if you were able to rename the players but if you were that would be cool. Also potentially divisions but that would be so hard to implement.

• Scenarios

Australian Football Coach was in development and on the market for a few years, and because of this they had 2015-2017 lists and scenarios all as options to start a league. I’m not sure what seasons exactly you would put in, but food for thought at least.

• Rule changes

It’s probably as relevant as ever but adding rule changes to the game would be cool. Things like raising the salary cap, lowering the salary floor, adding expansion teams, or evens gameplay rules (with the need to take them into consideration as they could make certain players more damaging and some more obsolete.)
Phew. That was a lot. Like I said above I know these would be extremely time consuming and I’d probably be right in saying that none of these would make PC19, but for future editions these would be some things to consider.
Is there an expected release date for the game? I don’t think anything is concrete just yet but sort of like a general area? Thanks.

 

[Grenville]

Thanks mate, love to here any and all suggestions, no matter how big of difficult they seem.

You're right in that PC2019 is going to be light on new functionality. Free Agency and GWS obviously, Player model and Sim overhaul, Scouting has been overhauled significantly since PC2011 and regional leagues expanded. Add finances to that list and i think that's going to be the most i can realistically add for big ticket items (smaller things here and there I can look at).
Beyond that though I'm willing to look at everything. Once i get some sort of ticketing system setup to track all this we start loading feature requests in there.

 

[RU_]

Pretty excited to play this. PM me Grenville if you want some ratings help.

 

[PerfectFooty]

Grenville i think an interesting feature would be the option to start off unemployed. You’re able to do this in Football Manager which probably works because of all the leagues that are in FM, but if lower leagues are going to be playable (can you confirm this? I think I recall you saying it previously) then it woruld be able to solve the dilemma of not knowing which team to manage.
Also this would enable the possibility to do a 100 or 1000 year sim like what has been done for Football Manager. Would love to see what Port’s lineup in 2077 will look like

I've often thought this would be cool in PC2011, when you don't accept a contract the game tells you that the game will end if you don't.

It's be awesome to either
a. Take an assistant role at another club, (basically grey out a lot of the senior coach stuff and sim the year)
b. Coach at the lower levels

 

[saintkildaman]

I've often thought this would be cool in PC2011, when you don't accept a contract the game tells you that the game will end if you don't.

It's be awesome to either
a. Take an assistant role at another club, (basically grey out a lot of the senior coach stuff and sim the year)
b. Coach at the lower levels

Always thought this. Would be unreal to be able to start a career coaching in either the state leagues or TAC cup and work your way to the AFL.

 

[Sab22]

I've often thought this would be cool in PC2011, when you don't accept a contract the game tells you that the game will end if you don't.

It's be awesome to either
a. Take an assistant role at another club, (basically grey out a lot of the senior coach stuff and sim the year)
b. Coach at the lower levels

This!

Another element would be coaches having overalls as well. Assistants starting at 60 and like senior coaches in 80 and 90s.

 

[buttermuffs]

Man, I’m so excited to give this a go next year! More than a decent investment considering how much fun 2011 was. I only wish Wicked Witch had someone like you, because their career mode is whack.

 

[Grenville]

Man, I’m so excited to give this a go next year! More than a decent investment considering how much fun 2011 was. I only wish Wicked Witch had someone like you, because their career mode is whack.

Big ant Studios started following me here this week. A collaborative project would be pretty interesting.

 

[BigKep]

Greenville I'm one of those people that sims the games (I get most of my joy out of list management and putting together a good team and watching the new recruits performance). Will the sim engine be much the same as PC2011?

On [device_name] using BigFooty.com mobile app

 

[Grenville]

Greenville I'm one of those people that sims the games (I get most of my joy out of list management and putting together a good team and watching the new recruits performance). Will the sim engine be much the same as PC2011?

On [device_name] using BigFooty.com mobile app

Its the area where I'm spending the most time. Completely rewritten & vastly improved.

 

[Grenville]

I've often thought this would be cool in PC2011, when you don't accept a contract the game tells you that the game will end if you don't.

It's be awesome to either
a. Take an assistant role at another club, (basically grey out a lot of the senior coach stuff and sim the year)
b. Coach at the lower levels

I'm hopeful that PC2019 will set up some of these features in the future. Regional leagues have moved to mirror the AFL (fully simulated games, players use the same model, stats/awards kept etc). You'll see it on the scouting side this time around, but gets us closer.

 

[GetAroundHim99]

Will PC2019 have a custom league option that has a commissioner mode like Out of the Park Baseball where you can control all teams? I could really use an AFL management game like that to run my fantasy football league.

 

[Collingwood pro]

Not sure if this has been asked but was just wondering if the trading and drafting system is changing. Easily the most enjoyable part of 2011 but can be really easy to game.

 

[Grenville]

Will PC2019 have a custom league option that has a commissioner mode like Out of the Park Baseball where you can control all teams? I could really use an AFL management game like that to run my fantasy football league.

Something that could be done in the future, but not this time around mate, sorry. Development is just me in spare time & working on releasing around the start of next season so i need to be conservative with new features. Focus is really on trying to get the core game as solid as possible this time around & will look to build back on that in the future.

 

[GetAroundHim99]

Something that could be done in the future, but not this time around mate, sorry. Development is just me in spare time & working on releasing around the start of next season so i need to be conservative with new features. Focus is really on trying to get the core game as solid as possible this time around & will look to build back on that in the future.

I can understand. You'd want the base of a game to be the best it can be.

It would be cool to get it into a version of PC after PC2019.

 

[Sub7ekjr]

If it's well supported by us and maybe even picked up by Steam and sells relatively well, we can turn it into a game like Football Manager is, incremental updates each season with new features.

I don't know how long Grenville will want to keep developing it, but if it gets some sort of traction, it may pay enough to make it worthwhile even on the side.

Otherwise, the base is the most important part. It's why I don't get what happened to the match simulation games for AFL. Evolution was okay, but my favourite is still Live 1.

 

[Simon_Nesbit]

As Adam knows all too well, the market for AFL games is just too small to make anything out of. It's a labour of love.

Soccer has a worldwide market of Billions - and FM (the series - combined!) has sold just 7 million copies in 15 years. (IF you include the original version it's 15 million in 27 years). It's by FAR the most popular sports management game on the planet.

If similar ratio applied, Ad would sell ~200 copies. Even if considered "pure profit" (steam, marketing, distribution, support, etc all takes time and $$$ away from development) - we are talking <10k per year.

 

[Grenville]

As Adam knows all too well, the market for AFL games is just too small to make anything out of. It's a labour of love.

Soccer has a worldwide market of Billions - and FM (the series - combined!) has sold just 7 million copies in 15 years. (IF you include the original version it's 15 million in 27 years). It's by FAR the most popular sports management game on the planet.

If similar ratio applied, Ad would sell ~200 copies. Even if considered "pure profit" (steam, marketing, distribution, support, etc all takes time and $$$ away from development) - we are talking <10k per year.

Always wanted a game like this for Aussie Rules which was my motivation starting out. Back in the day around 2009 i got layed off when the economy tanked and spent a couple of years working on the game full time (no kids at that point). These days i work full time, make plenty and live comfortably. This is not a money making venture. Anything that it generates on steam I plan to roll back into future development/hosting etc.

 

[Fizzler]

Always wanted a game like this for Aussie Rules which was my motivation starting out. Back in the day around 2009 i got layed off when the economy tanked and spent a couple of years working on the game full time (no kids at that point). These days i work full time, make plenty and live comfortably. This is not a money making venture. Anything that it generates on steam I plan to roll back into future development/hosting etc.

Were you working in the video game industry before the GFC?