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Why do some players never seem to reach their potential?


D-Hizzle

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Does anyone have any idea why some players never seem to reach the top of what their attributes allow?  For example, Doug Gilmour is a "4" speed, and a 4 4 shooter.  I've been noticing that he always seems to be at the bottom end of the range that a "4" could allow.

Does anyone else see this happen?  

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Hmm, I've been through that part of the code before and I don't know if that's possible. For speed, the game takes the player's base rating (4), multiplies it by 5 (20) then adds a random number from -3 to+2. That random number comes from a randomly generated table of numbers. I did not notice one way or the other if there might be some other thing influencing the random bonus table that would make it not random.

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Some attributes are affected by home/away modifiers, but I don't think speed was one of them. But yes some players might have some consistent attribute boost at home, so maybe that is what you are feeling.

Edit: I checked my old notes: Offensive and defensive awareness, shot accuracy, passing, and stick handling are affected by home and/or away bonuses.

 

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16 hours ago, smozoma said:

Hmm, I've been through that part of the code before and I don't know if that's possible. For speed, the game takes the player's base rating (4), multiplies it by 5 (20) then adds a random number from -3 to+2. That random number comes from a randomly generated table of numbers. I did not notice one way or the other if there might be some other thing influencing the random bonus table that would make it not random.

So if two Doug Gilmours were on the ice the 4/4 rating could be different between them because of multipliers?  I think i read somewhere that the actual rating when checking line up aren't accurate?

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29 minutes ago, segathon said:

So if two Doug Gilmours were on the ice the 4/4 rating could be different between them because of multipliers?  I think i read somewhere that the actual rating when checking line up aren't accurate?

That's right, each player on the team gets a separate random bonus from a table. So if you make a team with all players the same, they likely won't all feel the same (barring crazy coincidence of all random values being the same)

Also right, the edit lines and team roster and Ron bar screen ratings etc are wrong, they used a different random table. I made a hack that fixes it so it's consistent, and another that removes the bonuses so players are always the same. I also made a hack that made players hot/cold on each individual attribute, but it felt really weird, the players lost their "feels/identities".

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On 7/26/2010 at 1:48 AM, smozoma said:

Edit Lines ratings follows the formula (0-to-6 rating)x18+bonus

RAM Watch rating (these are the under-the-hood ratings the game actually uses for your players), the formula is (0-to-6 rating)x5+(bonus/3).

Since the game doesn't use decimal numbers, when you divide a number by 3, you have to round down. so 1/3 is 0. 5/3 is 1. -5/3 is -1.

If I understand this correctly, the fact that the bonus is -9 to +8 has some deeper implications. Because you have to divide by 3 and round down, the -9 bonus is the only one that will get you a 3 adjustment. Taking that a step further, there really isn't a range of 18 different bonus attributes, but rather 6 possible adjustments (-3,-2,-1,0,1,2).

Here is a chart that shows what the "under-the-hood" ratings bonus would be for each of the bonus values. I then translate it back into our familiar "0-6" rating scale to make it easier to digest.

uZKTtos.png

The percentages are the chance you have of getting one of those bonuses assuming each bonus has an equal probability of being selected. You'll note that there is more RED here than green (because of that -9), so you are more likely to have a cold player than hot player on any given game. Also, a super-cold player (-9 bonus) is the equivalent of a hot player (+6 -- +8).

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Thanks for that, read it a couple times and it's still overheating my brain.

Does anybody sub out similar players during the game to get a "feel" if one player got the better hot rating, do you think you can tell the difference on the blue 16 bit ice?

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27 minutes ago, kingraph said:

 

 

 

If I understand this correctly, the fact that the bonus is -9 to +8 has some deeper implications. Because you have to divide by 3 and round down, the -9 bonus is the only one that will get you a 3 adjustment. Taking that a step further, there really isn't a range of 18 different bonus attributes, but rather 6 possible adjustments (-3,-2,-1,0,1,2).

Here is a chart that shows what the "under-the-hood" ratings bonus would be for each of the bonus values. I then translate it back into our familiar "0-6" rating scale to make it easier to digest.

uZKTtos.png

The percentages are the chance you have of getting one of those bonuses assuming each bonus has an equal probability of being selected. You'll note that there is more RED here than green (because of that -9), so you are more likely to have a cold player than hot player on any given game. Also, a super-cold player (-9 bonus) is the equivalent of a hot player (+6 -- +8).

Nice charts! I had actually forgotten about the whole divide by 3 thing.

13 minutes ago, segathon said:

Thanks for that, read it a couple times and it's still overheating my brain.

Does anybody sub out similar players during the game to get a "feel" if one player got the better hot rating, do you think you can tell the difference on the blue 16 bit ice?

I definitely will sub a guy out if he seems cold and there's another decent guy on the bench. I only notice it when a guy who is supposed to have a hard shot shoots too slowly. I can't tell due to skating, though I imagine some better players can tell that.

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15 minutes ago, segathon said:

Thanks for that, read it a couple times and it's still overheating my brain.

Does anybody sub out similar players during the game to get a "feel" if one player got the better hot rating, do you think you can tell the difference on the blue 16 bit ice?

There are people who swear by this, so I think so.  I THINK I can, but personally I feel the overall momentum of the game is a much bigger factor than an individual player's ratings hot/cold, so I don't pay too much attention.

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4 hours ago, kingraph said:

There are people who swear by this, so I think so.  I THINK I can, but personally I feel the overall momentum of the game is a much bigger factor than an individual player's ratings hot/cold, so I don't pay too much attention.

I'm sort of surprised you didn't feel this when doing your world record attempts. I'm up to ~30 goals consistently (I can't even get as many shots as you had goals!), and there are definitely games where Roenick's shot feels sloppy, or Bure is really wiring it.

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On 3/21/2020 at 8:44 AM, smozoma said:

That's right, each player on the team gets a separate random bonus from a table. So if you make a team with all players the same, they likely won't all feel the same (barring crazy coincidence of all random values being the same)

Also right, the edit lines and team roster and Ron bar screen ratings etc are wrong, they used a different random table. I made a hack that fixes it so it's consistent, and another that removes the bonuses so players are always the same. I also made a hack that made players hot/cold on each individual attribute, but it felt really weird, the players lost their "feels/identities".

Ya, I used your hack (fantastic work, btw!), and fixed the hot/cold and edit lines ratings.  

I haven't done a scientific study or anything, but me and a buddy have been playing this since '93, and maybe it just seems this way, but certain players 'never' seem to be in the upper end of what they could be.  

We've been doing a two-person league for several years now (we're on our 12th season actually) where we draft most of the players onto our franchises (we have 12 each) that we always keep, then play a 12-game season; all of my teams play all of his teams once, and vice-versa.  We even hacked it so that all teams have the exact same Home/Away modifiers hoping to take away any benefit to either one of us having a 'better' HAM.  We track every stat possible (using the stat extractor) and keep records for every game.

 

Long story short, some people *seem to be* up at the high end of what's possible more often than not, and some seem to be at the low end more often than not.  Maybe it's one of those things where you only remember the times that the statistics go against you....

 

Another interesting question that is somewhat related: in our league we have created a few players to add to the player pool and named them after people we know.  We've made one guy, "Brent" for example, that is a 5/6 shooter, but ends up having a lousy shot.  Murray Craven has a much better shot!  You'd think he'd be like JR or AM, but he's a total bust.  Any ideas why he isn't a supreme shooter?  I can send you the .bin file to see what I mean.  Below is a screenshot of his attributes.  Do you see something that would make him a lousy shooter?  I mean, he has power (rarely, actually), but never seems to get off a good one-timer or wind up like a Lindros or a Lemieux.  SHM!  We have several players like this: It seems like something in their code is making them not be nearly as good as another player with similar attributes.

 

Brent Wood.jpg

                                               
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7 minutes ago, smozoma said:

I'm sort of surprised you didn't feel this when doing your world record attempts. I'm up to ~30 goals consistently (I can't even get as many shots as you had goals!), and there are definitely games where Roenick's shot feels sloppy, or Bure is really wiring it.

That's actually my point.  I assume the difficulty in getting past 30 isn't from the individual hot/cold players, but it's when the game goes into haywire mode -- defense AI is all over you like a cheap suit, they get to all loose pucks and are flying all over, successfully checking you, while your team is always skating in the wrong direction, running into each other, missing the net, passing blind, etc.  It's those moments, which I have called "momentum", that determine your success.  In a world record attempt, you will undoubtedly encounter a period of time where it's just impossible to score and you can FEEL the computer is about to score on you no matter what.  It doesn't matter if JR is Hot or Cold during that time...it ain't happenin'!  The length of time that "haywire mode" lasts, what causes it, what prevents it, etc. is somewhat of a mystery and will be the biggest factor in your success at the record (next to being able to score slappers/dekes/crease-cuts).  The same thing is true in human vs human games.  There's a scale, and sometimes it's tilted one way and sometimes the other throughout the game.  Sometimes it's for a period or so, sometimes it's tilted one way the entire game!  The degree of tilt can be major or minor.  I definitely picture a RAM byte going -99 to +99 that represents "momentum" lol.  

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1 minute ago, kingraph said:

That's actually my point.  I assume the difficulty in getting past 30 isn't from the individual hot/cold players, but it's when the game goes into haywire mode -- defense AI is all over you like a cheap suit, they get to all loose pucks and are flying all over, successfully checking you, while your team is always skating in the wrong direction, running into each other, missing the net, passing blind, etc.  It's those moments, which I have called "momentum", that determine your success.  In a world record attempt, you will undoubtedly encounter a period of time where it's just impossible to score and you can FEEL the computer is about to score on you no matter what.  It doesn't matter if JR is Hot or Cold during that time...it ain't happenin'!  The length of time that "haywire mode" lasts, what causes it, what prevents it, etc. is somewhat of a mystery and will be the biggest factor in your success at the record (next to being able to score slappers/dekes/crease-cuts).  The same thing is true in human vs human games.  There's a scale, and sometimes it's tilted one way and sometimes the other throughout the game.  Sometimes it's for a period or so, sometimes it's tilted one way the entire game!  The degree of tilt can be major or minor.  I definitely picture a RAM byte going -99 to +99 that represents "momentum" lol.  

In our seasons, this tends to be the most frustrating thing when playing against another player; it's like you have to just ride it out, and wait for that 'haywire' period to end.  

In previous seasons we had the "Home Adv" set to 'HIGH', and the "Away Adv" set to 'High'.  It seemed like the 'haywire' stuff was worse.  I set all the HAM's to 'Average' and it doesn't seem to be as pronounced.

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10 minutes ago, kingraph said:

That's actually my point.  I assume the difficulty in getting past 30 isn't from the individual hot/cold players, but it's when the game goes into haywire mode -- defense AI is all over you like a cheap suit, they get to all loose pucks and are flying all over, successfully checking you, while your team is always skating in the wrong direction, running into each other, missing the net, passing blind, etc.  It's those moments, which I have called "momentum", that determine your success.  In a world record attempt, you will undoubtedly encounter a period of time where it's just impossible to score and you can FEEL the computer is about to score on you no matter what.  It doesn't matter if JR is Hot or Cold during that time...it ain't happenin'!  The length of time that "haywire mode" lasts, what causes it, what prevents it, etc. is somewhat of a mystery and will be the biggest factor in your success at the record (next to being able to score slappers/dekes/crease-cuts).  The same thing is true in human vs human games.  There's a scale, and sometimes it's tilted one way and sometimes the other throughout the game.  Sometimes it's for a period or so, sometimes it's tilted one way the entire game!  The degree of tilt can be major or minor.  I definitely picture a RAM byte going -99 to +99 that represents "momentum" lol.  

Ah OK, I get you :)

Those times where the CPU gets the puck in your zone and you know you're not getting it back until it's at centre-ice after they complete a tic-tac-toe quick-timer for a goal... that's a real thing.

I have no illusions of ever breaking the record, but I need to work on scoring the gimme goals, especially dekes. Generating more shots/chances per possession, too, I guess. Get them Corsi's up.

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24 minutes ago, D-Hizzle said:

Ya, I used your hack (fantastic work, btw!), and fixed the hot/cold and edit lines ratings.  

I haven't done a scientific study or anything, but me and a buddy have been playing this since '93, and maybe it just seems this way, but certain players 'never' seem to be in the upper end of what they could be.  

We've been doing a two-person league for several years now (we're on our 12th season actually) where we draft most of the players onto our franchises (we have 12 each) that we always keep, then play a 12-game season; all of my teams play all of his teams once, and vice-versa.  We even hacked it so that all teams have the exact same Home/Away modifiers hoping to take away any benefit to either one of us having a 'better' HAM.  We track every stat possible (using the stat extractor) and keep records for every game.

 

Long story short, some people *seem to be* up at the high end of what's possible more often than not, and some seem to be at the low end more often than not.  Maybe it's one of those things where you only remember the times that the statistics go against you....

 

Another interesting question that is somewhat related: in our league we have created a few players to add to the player pool and named them after people we know.  We've made one guy, "Brent" for example, that is a 5/6 shooter, but ends up having a lousy shot.  Murray Craven has a much better shot!  You'd think he'd be like JR or AM, but he's a total bust.  Any ideas why he isn't a supreme shooter?  I can send you the .bin file to see what I mean.  Below is a screenshot of his attributes.  Do you see something that would make him a lousy shooter?  I mean, he has power (rarely, actually), but never seems to get off a good one-timer or wind up like a Lindros or a Lemieux.  SHM!  We have several players like this: It seems like something in their code is making them not be nearly as good as another player with similar attributes.

 

Brent Wood.jpg

                                               

That league sounds amazing. Would love to see stats for that!

As for Brent.. I really have no idea why his shot would consistently disappoint. I could understand that the AI might not get him into good positions, but I'd expect the shot to be OK. On the other hand, I never could get a good shot out of Dmitri Khristich (4/6) so I wonder if there's something in common there...

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26 minutes ago, smozoma said:

That league sounds amazing. Would love to see stats for that!

As for Brent.. I really have no idea why his shot would consistently disappoint. I could understand that the AI might not get him into good positions, but I'd expect the shot to be OK. On the other hand, I never could get a good shot out of Dmitri Khristich (4/6) so I wonder if there's something in common there...

The only thing I can add that is interesting here is that the game doesn't have any 5/6 shots in the standard players.  It's all 4/6 or 5/5 for the best shots (or 6/3 if you love Hull).  I wonder if 5/6 creates some wonky effect?  But I agree, on paper Brent should be lighting up the f'in lamp.  

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Here's our season 11 scorebook (that's what we call it).  Most of this wouldn't be possible without your (Smoz) hacks, the NHL Stat Extractor, NOSE, EARE, etc.  

 

Season 1 was actually back in 2016.  We did a draft and placed all the players/teams on a CD; we seem to like the consistency of the CD version better than the ROM, but it's SO much easier to edit the teams with all the hacks that everyone has made for the ROM and PC play (with an HDMI going to a good TV.  Season 1 had to be played on some old tv because we didn't have any way to attach the SegaCD system we were using to a modern TV.  

The scorebook autotmatically updates each team's YTD stats when I paste the save-state stats from the NHL Stat Extractor.  

The "Red' teams are my buddy's, the 'Blue' teams are mine.

 

I'd love to hear what you think of all of this.  

Season 11 FINAL.xlsx

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14 minutes ago, kingraph said:

The only thing I can add that is interesting here is that the game doesn't have any 5/6 shots in the standard players.  It's all 4/6 or 5/5 for the best shots (or 6/3 if you love Hull).  I wonder if 5/6 creates some wonky effect?  But I agree, on paper Brent should be lighting up the f'in lamp.  

We've created a lot of other players, even one named after myself, and one after my buddy.  Some of them are fantastic shooters, some are just backups.  The player named after my buddy is a 6 weight, 5/6 speed/agility, 5/6 SHP/SHA.  He's always one of the first players drafted.  He seems to shoot how you'd think he would.   

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On 3/23/2020 at 4:55 PM, D-Hizzle said:

Here's our season 11 scorebook (that's what we call it).  Most of this wouldn't be possible without your (Smoz) hacks, the NHL Stat Extractor, NOSE, EARE, etc.  

 

Season 1 was actually back in 2016.  We did a draft and placed all the players/teams on a CD; we seem to like the consistency of the CD version better than the ROM, but it's SO much easier to edit the teams with all the hacks that everyone has made for the ROM and PC play (with an HDMI going to a good TV.  Season 1 had to be played on some old tv because we didn't have any way to attach the SegaCD system we were using to a modern TV.  

The scorebook autotmatically updates each team's YTD stats when I paste the save-state stats from the NHL Stat Extractor.  

The "Red' teams are my buddy's, the 'Blue' teams are mine.

 

I'd love to hear what you think of all of this.  

Season 11 FINAL.xlsx 2.51 MB · 2 downloads

That's an impressive spreadsheet!

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