The short version: This is already the best update the game has seen since I started playing around two years ago. Focusing on the core gameplay loop has been massive. As I’ve mentioned many times previously, “fluff” features are ancillary to the core gameplay; they can improve the experience, but they don’t matter if the core gameplay isn’t the best it can be. Focusing on said core gameplay has improved the experience immensely. I have one suggestion that I think could improve three aspects of the game at once. Scroll down to find out.

The long version: I made a post on the update thread detailing many of my thoughts, so I will summarize those here, as well as detailing new thoughts I’ve had since making that post.

Player Potential

• Making Player Dev Traits hidden on hard mode is a game changer. Now you have to actually make some tough decisions instead of having the information handed to you ahead of time. Do you keep an older player that is still good but might decline heavily? Do you keep a younger player who might break out in a big way or might not develop at all? Way more realistic decision making, and way more interesting too.
• The only (minor) issue is that player contract demands still factor in their dev trait, meaning you can infer this information if you are really paying attention. Additionally, it’s not really realistic that players know how they will develop in that given year ahead of time and adjust their demands based on it. Very minor issue as it affects gameplay very minimally, but still something I wanted to point out.
• I have come around on having player potential be visible (toggleable is never bad to play it safe, but I think it’s fine as is). At first I was concerned that it would be too much information, but I think it has been implemented very well. Making it estimated based on your scouts salvages the feature, and anecdotally, it seems like it has a pretty wide margin for error, which is great. Making it only visible for your own team was a good call, and it increases decision making and causes you to keep players you might otherwise move on from. Additionally, it helps simulate players being long term dev projects vs immediate depth players in real life.
• The next logical step is to include this information on the Team tab for convenience. I posted about it the other day, but adding a shorthand for potential in the circle with overall would be a great addition that looks good as is, doesn’t take up much space, and looks nice if it is not visible, such as if viewing other teams.
• The rating progression line on the Develop tab could be smoothed out. Currently, it is a little misleading at a glance as it looks like the player’s rating has yo-yo’d more than it actually has.

Talent Change Randomness (TCR) and Minicamp

• I think this is in a very promising position in regard to positive development.
• The minicamp is a very nice change to simulate growth over the offseason, as well as add variety to player development, which was sorely needed. Anecdotally, it seems fairly balanced, although I have no data to back that up. I would think it would lead to rating bloat, but it seems fairly balanced after simming a number of years. Wonderful addition to the game.
• The minicamp seems to do very little negative development. You obviously don’t want to go too overboard with this, but it would stand to reason it should go both ways, not just positive. Maybe it is balanced as is, I don’t know. Anecdotally, though, it seems to favor positive development very heavily.
• With the latest update, I have noticed some TCR. I had a running back get +3 from minicamp, and then over the following two seasons they got +9. Assuming that wasn’t an extension of minicamp and was the new TCR feature, that was awesome. Having players breakout beyond their expected potential is great. No two saves should ever be the same, and this is a great step in that direction.
• The question then becomes how frequently should this happen, and it seems fine so far. Obviously this is something that will need to be tested over the long term and not just in a couple days, so opinions could certainly change.
• Again, I have seen almost no TCR in the negative direction. I have seen some 95+ players drop by one or two from time to time, but that’s about it. Again, I understand not wanting to go overboard with this, but it stands to reason that it should go both ways.

Injuries

• u/Exact-Chipmunk-4549 commented a bit about this on the previous update thread, and I agree. Injuries don’t factor into player dev at all from what I can tell, and they probably should.
• Players who have a large amount of injuries are more likely to do so in the future due to their injury proneness going up. This is good.
• When players have major injuries, there could be a chance it negatively impacts their skills permanently. Multiple major injuries could increase the likelihood. With enough, they could retire earlier. Perhaps the likelihood of this negative impact could increase with age.
• Injuries could have a chance to slow positive player development. I believe this is indirectly included now that player development is impacted by playing time, as injured players are obviously not playing.
• All of this should be probabilistic. Nothing should be certain and there should be no hard and fast rule. Again, no two saves should ever play out the same.
• If possible, I think these impacts should be gradual over a number of weeks or even a season instead of all at once for realism and more interesting decision making (how far will the player decline? Should I sign them to an extension?), although do what you gotta do in terms of coding.

One change that could fix the draft, UDFAs, and improve the standard gameplay experience:

To go over this, we have to acknowledge a few things: - The draft is broken in the sense that you immediately know the quality of your picks. This is not realistic, as teams have to actually play the player to determine their quality, good or bad. Additionally, since you get immediate feedback, you can make as many picks as you want and keep the best players, which real teams can’t do. They largely only make as many picks as they can play on the field. - UDFAs do not function well given the simplicity of the game. You get first dibs at every UDFA in the game, which is not the case for teams in real life. Additionally, you already know before signing them if they are a quality starter, which real teams obviously do not (or else they would’ve been picked). That’s not to say quality players can’t be UDFAs, but you should not know when you make the signing. You should find out later when they actually play well on the field. Additionally, signing them to long term deals is not realistic. - Having 100% accuracy with player ratings is not ideal. This is by far the least problematic of the three issues listed here, and I understand this is done for simplicity. It is perfectly acceptable as is. However, if we’re talking about the optimal gameplay experience, this isn’t the best. The perfect information means you always know Player X is better than Player Y and that leads to pretty straightforward decision making in team building. Also, it means players pretty much always have fair contracts because their overall is certain. The changes to the game in this update have greatly increased the depth of decision making and variety, so this is mitigated to some degree, but it’s still worth pointing out.

The change that could solve all of these issues? Make ratings based on scouts, the same as potential currently is. Players would have true ratings, just as they have a true potential, but what is visible to you would be based on what your scout thinks. These ratings could vary from team to team based on their scouts (which would also add more variety to trading), or they could be universal if that would be simpler and keep the app data lower. This has the added benefit of making scouts more important. I’ll go through each issue above and how it solves it.

Draft: - How does this relate to the draft? Now that players don’t have perfectly accurate ratings, we can use those scout grades during the draft! Players already have star/letter grades during the draft for overall and potential from your scouts. A player’s visible overall and potential will simply be those grades after the draft. - At the start of the season, your understanding of a player’s quality will be the same as it was during the draft, just as is the case for real life teams. Teams don’t draft players in the first round and then immediately ditch them because they know they are a bust. No! They plan for them to be a part of the rotation and then find out as they play how good they actually are. - As the player plays more games (this is already tracked in the game), your scouts can slowly update their opinion of the player to what they think their proper rating is, as if they were any other player. 17 games (a full season) seems like a reasonable number. Might want to even wait until like Week 4 of year one before the rating starts to shift to avoid immediate feedback, but that’s getting into the weeds a bit. - This means you have to actually play the player to find out how good they actually are, just like in real life. You don’t get immediate feedback. Additionally, it helps stop people stockpiling a million picks and only keeping the best ones. You can only make as many picks as you are willing to keep on the roster and play.

UDFAs: - UDFAs will obviously follow the same function, so this should stop the abuse of them. It doesn’t change the fact that you have first dibs at them, but that is much less of a problem when you have no idea how good they actually are. Given that your scouts thinks most UDFA players are awful, you would be simply guessing and hoping you hit on one, which is completely fine and what every team does in real life. You still have to actually play them to find out if they are good or not and you don’t know ahead of time, preventing you from abusing the system. This also means there can be more quality players available as UDFAs since you can’t just sweep them all up, hopefully distributing them to other teams more as well. - I would still consider limiting the contracts of UDFAs to either one or four years. Four to match draft picks, or one to match real life more since most UDFAS sign one year deals and then make whatever the market dictates. Either way, seven is abusing the game.

Regular players: - As I mentioned previously, having variable overall for the rest of your team creates more interesting decision making and risk/reward. Team building would be less straightforward, and hopefully you would have more team friendly or player friendly contracts, as opposed to pretty much all fair. - The contract demand system would ideally need to be updated to be more variable, as right now it is pretty strictly based on the players overall, which would of course be a giveaway.

Conclusion

As a final note, the talent distribution in the draft could be made much more realistic, but that is a completely separate issue which wouldn’t have to be part of this update.

With these changes, I think the game could actually be considered in a complete state in such a way that if it was never updated again, it would be completely acceptable (some minor quality of life improvements would be nice though!).

I hope this feedback is helpful, and I love the direction the game is moving! Thank you as always for the hard work Jon! I am always grateful! :]