Ares wrote:
I'll preface this by saying that I have no idea how practical this idea is, but I figured I'd throw it out there. I know a lot of people are frustrated with the lack of play calling diversity. While obviously the best fix is to make the current slate of plays all more worthwhile since 90+% of them are currently unusable, it certainly wouldn't hurt to also just have more plays in general.
The idea would be to have a subsection where users could design a play in a simple editor, then post it and have others rate and comment on it. If based on that feedback some changes are made, the user who posted it can 'retire' a suggested play and link it to a new updated version. JDB could then theoretically browse through the subsection, filter for the top voted plays, and implement them however he sees fit.
As for the editor itself, it really shouldn't take much in terms of coding (not being glib, I've literally written this exact program before, back in those halcyon days when VB6 was a cutting edge language, haha). Text field for name. Pre-existing formation templates in an opt menu. Then a rules section, consisting of a list of each 11 positions, with each followed after by two drop down menus. The first would be 'action' (ie, Zone, Man, Blitz). The second would then further specify that action (ie, Zone area, Man WR#--or for CBs possibly B&R/Press/5 Cushion/10 Cushion/Prevent--, Blitz gap).
For offense, whether the QB is set to Pass or Hand-Off (or maybe one day Run Option or just a straight designed Run?) will 'fix' some of the boxes for certain positions, changing their contents (ie to stop you from setting your line to block downfield, any players from having the 'Run' option when the QB is set to Pass), as would obviously having a player set to Run, which would then clear anyone else currently set to that duty. Drop down options would be Run, Fake Run, Route, Block. Specification box would be Gap, or Route Type. If Route has been selected, there'd also be a depth box, 1-10, that would set the length of the route.
Then the user could add which playbooks they felt it should be included in and voila, submit.
I mean, you get the idea. Anyway, the reason I think this could be a helpful addition is that 'crowdsourcing' game development is an awesome way to enlist free labor for a project. As basically a single man team, why not take as much advantage as possible of those willing to lend help. Not only would we be the ones pumping out a bunch of fancy new plays, but we would also be the ones mercilessly down-voting and posting nasty comments on each other so that only the strongest plays survive peer critique. The other advantage is that it would let players come up with dynamic 'solutions' to plays that were OP. No answer to the 46 blitz? Here's a blitz killer. No answer to the blitz killer? Here's the anti-blitz killer. Etc.
Although I like the idea, I would like to see two different MFNs if this is in the pipeline, a MFN that doesn't require you to gameplan for hours and one where you log on for hours and gameplan to your hearts content.
One of the things that attracted me to MFN in the first place was the 'level' playing field. In recent months this seems to have exploited in various ways and IMHO there are now 2 tiers of players, the elite who go into great detail and seem to spend endless hours on here, and people like me who log into a team, watch the game, spend 5 mins setting tactics and carry on with RL.
Sorry , not trying to pour cold water on this idea.