So looking over the player stats for the season, it seems clear that the sim in its current state heavily favors offense. The leading passer went for 7,486 yards. For reference, the most ever by an NFL QB is 5,477. Four others also topped 6k, and some 20 QBs (who made at least 100 attempts) finished with 100+ QB rating for the season (compared to 7 in the 2013 season and 5 in 2012). Of note also is how little those top QBs are being paid, despite the cap being much higher here than in the NFL.

Of rushers, the top ten put together a combined 21,119 yards (all over 1500) compared to 12,713 in the 2013 season of the NFL (only 1 over 1500). Similarly paid very little all things considered.

Anyhow, my question is whether this is the product of intentional design decisions, or if these are known issues being worked on, or what. Thanks!

The stats are constantly a work in progress - you'll notice that in more recent seasons especially here in MFN-2 and especially in MFN-1 the stats are leveling out more. Passing is still a little strong, but the next update addresses some of that.

For salaries, they are 100% market driven - so how the actual users sign players is the only impact on what players ask for.

Btw, I've had several guys note where stars are out of balance, and I welcome that feedback as it is very helpful since there are so many to think about - so as you play please give feedback. Just don't pay too much attention to historical seasons when looking at it from that perspective because engine updates roll out just about every season.

Thanks for the reply!

If it's market driven, how does that impact resigning players? Do they look at the corresponding contracts at their position in relation to their own performance/rating, or is it based off their previous contract? If a player finishes the league with the most passing yards, one would think they'd rather test FA waters than resign for anything less than $22M. Whether they get that or not may be a different story, of course.

It's based on other players at the same position with similar ratings. But that's an interesting idea to incorporate their stats into their offers - I'll consider that for a future release.

While I obviously can't speak to the game play having not yet experienced that aspect of the game, I do have one cursory observation from looking over the two leagues I've joined, which is that star players tend to be far too ubiquitous (ie in this league there are sufficient +80 overall RBs for all but one team to field one; that said, if the talent pool in MFN-8 stays flat beyond the starting draft it should be totally awesome) and they're too perfect. Which is to say, attribute distribution tends to be relatively flat (at all levels, not just the top), whereas I don't believe that's as much the case in the NFL. Peyton Manning, for instance, is considered by most to be the best QB to ever play and would merit a 99 score in any sim, but if you were to actually put together his card he would most definitely not get 100 scores at all slots (very low speed, middling strength, middling scramble, poor break tackle, high but still less arm strength than say Jay Cutler, etc), nor really should any player save for maybe a rare handful in a league's history at all positions. As another example, Adrian Peterson was more or less the best pure RB in the league, but on his scorecard, his route running and pass catching would both be low, and his fumbling would be far from perfect. Shady on the other hand might not have the raw strength and tackle breaking that AP had, but his receiving skills would be top notch. Players of the caliber of Jerry Rice at their position should be once or twice in a lifetime, but most every position I've scouted thus in MFN-2 far has at least a few players at or near 100 in every relevant category.

I feel like I'm commenting/criticizing a lot for having just joined, so sorry for that, but there's a lot here to get excited about, and I'd love for the game to reach its own future potential :)

Also, I probably shouldn't lobby for lower player attribute generation as someone newly joining a league with a comparatively talentless team direly in need of young talent, haha.

Anyhow, thanks a lot for taking the time to read/respond to user feedback, I definitely appreciate it.

That's good constructive feedback.

That actually should happen, but the player won't be rated high unless you have turned down the influence of the given attribute; i.e. if a QB is 100 pass accuracy but 0 scramble ability, and your player attribute weights have both attributes at the same weight, between those two attributes he'll score a 50. The default player attribute weights will consider most of the attributes fairly evenly - but you are able to customize those to reduce or turn of the influence of attributes that you don't care about.

That's definitely an incredibly awesome feature, and the default weight for QBs seems to make sense at a quick glance, but like I mentioned, what I'm finding so far in looking over player cards is that most of them are relatively flat and generic in their skill bracket. Most of their key attributes will ultimately all end up in more or less the same threshold, with generally mild variance (ie, few 90+ arm strength gunslingers with <50 accuracy). Looking at the top 10 rated (by default settings) QBs in MFN-2, only two had any real tangible 'deficits', which were slightly subpar arm strength (changing the weight for speed on QBs to 0 and then again to 100 made NO change to the composition of the top 10, for instance, only shuffled a few of them around). And while the talent threshold in MFN-8 is significantly lower, the players I've looked at so far (several hundred player cards thus far and counting) similarly don't differentiate much in skill sets save for certain specific categories that tend towards extremes (ie hard count in QBs, speed in OL, etc). So if a player is in the 90s, or 80s, or 70s, most all his skills will be. While this isn't universally true, it's certainly been more true than not from what I've seen.

Others may disagree with this assessment, and it certainly isn't to say there aren't exceptions, but it's just something that's really stood out to me in my preliminary explorations of players.