From what I can tell, we have a varied opinion of the play use diversity effort, we have lost a few of the team owners as a result, and we have an equal number of owners who strongly prefer it. There are two areas of diversity. The basic, full selection of 40/30 plays, setting the offense and defense sliders even. and then there is the defensive coverages and blitzes, 10 secondary and 5 LB, not counting Blitz 2+. The following is from a GG thread in the FCS League, it may or may not help with your thinking and preference about it, and whether or not you would like to see it continued. .............................
Actually, its not difficult at all. What makes it difficult ito get full diversity is that we are trying to do so while trying to use the plays that are consistently better more than the ones that arent. Rules, of course, will also affect the selection both for and against diversity, along with a few other factors like play familiarity and AI code.
One of the problems we have, and one of the reasons that defenses have the current advantage (look at league passer ratings), is that you can select 30 defensive plays, including 1 from each coverage, but 80% plus of the use is 1 deep, 2 deep, and Man coverage, along with 1 and 2 blitz LB use. That is the primary reason that defenses are more dominant, whether it is using our "diversity" effort, or using "4.6 optimum. In other words, theres not as much diversity in the defense, which is still a limiting factor and what offense plays have a chance of succeeding.
Here's what I mean - my defensive play use results from our extremely defensive 9-6 CC game. 25 def plays used (which is considered very good). In our game, the Bison had 74 defensive play calls and Harvard had 53 (pretty large difference!) Here is the break down on the coverages and LB calls by the Bison, according to gameplanning/defense/1 game results ......
1 deep man - 6 plays, 16 times. 2 deep man - 5 plays, 25 times. Man - 8 plays, 27 times.
Those are the top 3 coverages, 19 plays out of 30 and were used a total of 68 plays. If accurate, that only leaves less than 10 plays for the other 11 coverages.
3 deep zone - 1 play, used 3 times. 4 deep zone - 0. Corner Blitz - 2 plays, used 2 times.
Safety Blitz - 1 play used once. 2 deep zone - 1 play used twice. 3 deep man - 0. and 4 deep man - 1 play used once. total use - 8 times.
There are 10 coverages, so the other seven coverages total 11 plays, and were used 8 times. Obviously, we dont want coverages used equally, but I would rather see some more useage to get a better balance between offense and defense results, like 70/30. However, I dont think we can do it as a collective and individual gameplanning. To level the playing field, it would need to be done in the game programming and code, which is the hope for future versions. Have the coaches more involved, with their tendencies and ratings having an effect on the play use and type, remove the settings for offense and defense completely. Rules is another consideration for revision, so that play selection cannot be limited, or eliminate rules altogether and leave that up to the coaches cumulative tendencies.
There are 6 LB settings and coverages. Here are the number and use from our game.....
1. Zone - 5 plays - 13. 2. Blitz 1 - 5 plays - 16. 3. Blitz 2 - 6 plays - 18. 4. Man - 9 plays - 34. and 5. Zone In - 5 plays - 13. Man coverage was use twice as much as the others, otherwise its a good and balanced spread. Blitz 2+ was not included in active plays.
So what it all means is that you can get 25 or more defensive plays used, but that doesnt tell you what is happening diversity-wise with the secondary and LB coverages. Without looking at the game play log, I would guess that Harvards defensive play use and coverages & blitzes are very similar.
