Player condition / fatigue

[KevT90]

To me the fact you can finish the top team in the NHL and then win the Stanley Cup, with just a 12 man roster for every single game including playoffs, without apparent consequences to player exhaustion nor more injuries, is a big game breaker.

Player condition / fatigue during games and/or between games should be adjusted to have a much greater impact on performance.

[Nino-33]

7 hours ago, KoKid90 said:

To me the fact you can finish the top team in the NHL and then win the Stanley Cup, with just a 12 man roster for every single game including playoffs, without apparent consequences to player exhaustion nor more injuries, is a big game breaker.

Player condition / fatigue during games and/or between games should be adjusted to have a much greater impact on performance.

Could you post screenshots showing this?

Maybe it would help in getting it addressed/help those that disagree see there's a definite need for improvement (i.e. greater fatigue/more injuries); in the past I've seen people post complaints that there's to much fatigue/to many injuries, and thus my thinking that screenshot support would be helpful

 

I'm a big proponent of player condition/fatigue having a much greater impact on performance myself, and didn't realize it was such that one could use just a 12 man roster!

[KevT90]

For screenshots, I mean, I would have had to take screenshots of my roster for every game showing I was only playing with 2G, 6F, 4D and then show the result of the game, which would be impractical. I could show the final season standings and the roster but then it doesn't prove that I played all season with the 12 man roster. I find it would be useless to post screenshots in this case. 

You can take my words or not ... 

Started as the Habs with the TBL Rosters 9.0b. Kept only my 6 best forwards, 4 best D-man and kicked everyone else in the AHL after waiving them. 

I then played enhanced sim and never went on vacation since the AI will recall players eventually to make a 20 man roster. I made sure every game was played with 12 players. Only loss 1 game by forfeiture as I had a player get injured who couldn't continue the game, you cannot play below 12 players and you lose by forfeiture. This only happened once. 

Player exhaustion only started to appear towards the 2/3 of the season where about half of my players were showing as being exhausted. 

I just ignored this and continued playing and collecting Wins with those same guys. I finished 3 overall in the NHL, only 4pts behind the 1st spot but Price got injured for 2 weeks where I lost most of my game when Montoya had to play 7-8 games in a row.

Galchenyuk, Radulov and Pacioretty finished in the top 5 NHL point leaders.

I swept Florida 4-0 in the first round of the playoff. Again most players were exhausted since the 2/3 of the season ... 

Then lost 4-3 to the Tampa Bay lightning in the second round.  So I may have been able to pass on to the finals if the result of only one game would have been different. 

I did not suffer any long terms injuries and was able to only use the same 2 or 3 replacements when needed for injuries for short period of time. 

The thing is that you could then go shop for the most talented and expensive players in the league and get an all star 12 man roster on your team and you would stay below the salary cap hit since only maybe 15 players would count towards the cap hit, getting a cap relief from those not in your NHL roster (buried contract rule), which you could eventually eliminate completely as the first years go by. 

I would then assume one would win the Cup after gathering a much better 12 man roster than I had, considering the room for salary cap can get huge.

[Nino-33]

1 hour ago, KoKid90 said:

For screenshots, I mean, I would have had to take screenshots of my roster for every game showing I was only playing with 2G, 6F, 4D and then show the result of the game, which would be impractical. I could show the final season standings and the roster but then it doesn't prove that I played all season with the 12 man roster. I find it would be useless to post screenshots in this case. 

Actually it's really easy to provide a useful screenshot: click on NHL, select Player Statistics, select your team from the Teams filter, click on ATOI so it shows greatest to least and you'd have your screenshot that showed your playing with a 12 man roster (and it would only require a single screenshot, or two if you included the playoffs)

[KevT90]

I never thought of that one ... I made the one season but didn't save the game. It would only support my text which explains more. It's not a bug so I am just describing a bad gameplay mechanic that everyone else could repeat and experience. Players were averaging 30 min/game since you rotate with two lines. I remember one game seing Galchenyuk play 39 min.

[IvanIvanovich]

17 hours ago, KoKid90 said:

Player exhaustion only started to appear towards the 2/3 of the season where about half of my players were showing as being exhausted. 

The attribute number you are talking about only refers to physical health and game readiness. Exhaustion and mental and physical jadedness from overwork is a hidden attribute that isn't visible to the player. You cannot know if your players are affected or not by your strategy only by looking at the attribute that you are shown.

The hidden attribute will affect performance and result in a drop-off later in the season if the player is overworked. This is very notable, especially in  Goaltenders. You'll see a starter perform much better during the playoffs if you've given the backup plenty of starts during the season. I'm sure that skaters are similarly affected especially if they're played 30+ minutes every game.

[KevT90]

It isn't a numerical attribute you can see I know, but it will eventually appear next to the player's name in the roster screen that he is exhausted. So yes you can see when they are exhausted. 

[Nino-33]

There isn't actually a hidden Attribute either, BUT Riz has mentioned the word "jadedness" in reference to goaltenders who are overplayed, like it's part of the game code...and I responded by saying IMO I didn't think it was doing an effective job of representing a player being overplayed and needed adjustment/improvement.....

 

That's a big part of the reason why I asked for screenshot "proof" as IMO there's no way players (in particular forwards) should be able to play the significant icetime they do game after game in EHM; in reality a team trying to play with 12 players in the NHL would lose most of their games and regularly get "blown out" and never make the playoffs, and players would become to exhausted to even be able to play & almost certainly the Union/League would step in too (so IMO it would make total sense that a user doing so as a GM in EHM should be fired by the owner due to complaints/concerns raised by the Union/League)

[KevT90]

Just to convince myself that I didn't just get lucky with this ''test'', and also to support my concern/issue with screenshots as a ''proof'', I've re simulated under the same conditions as I explained in the previous post but picked the Pens instead of the Habs.  So the same 12 players played for the entire season and with only those 12 for every single games except injuries.

This time I finished 1st overall with 119 pts. (Lost in second round of playoffs again but played without Malkin and Kunitz for the entire round for injuries)

3 of my players were in the top 4 scoring leaders. 

Fleury was the 1st to be exhausted at 32 games in and only had to skip a game. The first non-goalie to become exhausted was Kunitz at 61 games, some more followed after. 

I have attached some screenshots, one showing the average ice-time of those 12 players. 

In conclusion, fatigue / condition / exhaustion systems should be adjusted as there's no way players could perform individually and as a team under such condition (entire season 12 men's team)

[Nino-33]

Thanks for your efforts! Much appreciated!

Just curious...any idea why Matt Murray got some icetime in 61 of the 80 games that Fleury played?

[KevT90]

I had noticed this as well from even my Habs sim. I was to also address this here or on the TBL forums ... Most games, if I looked at the boxscore, I noticed that my backup had 1-2 min of icetime. I didn't coach games myself but still it didn't make sense because everytime I noticed he had icetime, the backup never received any shot. Appears to be a bug, have you tested a sim since update 1.3 where you are not coaching games ? Not sure if it applies to all users ?

[Nino-33]

1 hour ago, KoKid90 said:

I had noticed this as well from even my Habs sim. I was to also address this here or on the TBL forums ... Most games, if I looked at the boxscore, I noticed that my backup had 1-2 min of icetime. I didn't coach games myself but still it didn't make sense because everytime I noticed he had icetime, the backup never received any shot. Appears to be a bug, have you tested a sim since update 1.3 where you are not coaching games ? Not sure if it applies to all users ?

Might be worth posting at TBL, see if others are experiencing the same "weirdness"

I've been running tests round-the-clock since a few days before TBL's 2016-17 database came out (where I'm not a GM for any team), and just stopped the current test and took a look through a dozen NHL teams and everything looks fine; I clicked on Standings, then clicked on a Team which brings up their Roster, then I clicked on each Goaltender and then on Game Log so I could see their TOI and except for on occasion goaltenders being replaced when you'd expect them to everything made sense & I also went through a half dozen teams via Player Statistics (filtered for just Goaltenders) and looked at GP and TOI and again everything seemed to make sense

 

[Riz Remes]

Thanks for the reports, I will try and replicate these situations here and see what can be improved.

[South-Side]

Regarding conditioning from what i've played in the first season (each game not sim ahead) only my first line started to show signs of fatigue. And that after passing the 62 games played plateau. But i didn't make any changes to my first line all that time, only when Mark Scheifele was injured for a month they played with a different center.

Now i have to alternate Ehlers and Laine with other players  because they cannot play more than 2-3 games in a row. And Mark Scheifele as well.

I manage the Winnipeg JETS.

 

[KevT90]

I want to also bring another big issue in the same line as this topic to emphasize and support the lack of player fatigue. There is a commonly known tactic named RED PlaymOver Barrage that is effectively broken in the sense that it makes an okay team (roster wise) become a great team.  

I have uploaded a screenshot of the Tactical Settings of the tactic below. In short, it consists in telling your player to go ALL OUT on everything ! and it gives amazing results. 

So not only you can play with 12 players for a full season and be extremely successful, but you can also tell all of your players to go full blast and run around like headless chickens and they won't tire out and even make you a much greater team. 

This tactic makes no sense and just like the 12 players roster, it shouldn't be possible for players to sustain such system.

Also there shouldn't be a tactic that fits all coaches / players either.

[Riz Remes]

The next (1.4) update will include adjustments to the player energy/condition levels during games as well as the knock-on effects from these to the ability to complete actions and move. So playing a short bench will tire out players quicker during a game and will have a drastically more noticeable effect on the performance levels as well.

[South-Side]

@KoKid90

I used RED PlaymOver Barrage in my Jets save , alternating with others. I don't know about your save but in mine you cannot play it for a long period of time as it will break your 1st line. In my save it did just that , because it favors 1 line more than the others so you cannot use it for 3-4 games in a row as players get tired and do not recover in a short period of time. If you push them they get injured. And usually players on the first line play have  roles on other lines (PP,PK) also so the usage is greater.

[Nino-33]

3 hours ago, South-Side said:

@KoKid90

I used RED PlaymOver Barrage in my Jets save , alternating with others. I don't know about your save but in mine you cannot play it for a long period of time as it will break your 1st line. In my save it did just that , because it favors 1 line more than the others so you cannot use it for 3-4 games in a row as players get tired and do not recover in a short period of time. If you push them they get injured. And usually players on the first line play have  roles on other lines (PP,PK) also so the usage is greater.

I don't think icetime connects to the tactical choices...icetime connects to whether you choose Normal, Equal, Overload, Just Three or Just Two (and if you do use Equal, how often and for how long you change it to something else) - if you selected Equal, and didn't have the players on your #1 line also on your #1 PP and #1 PK and #1 4-on-4 then your #1 line wouldn't get excessive icetime and "break"

[KevT90]

 

On 1/24/2017 at 09:25, Riz Remes said:

The next (1.4) update will include adjustments to the player energy/condition levels during games as well as the knock-on effects from these to the ability to complete actions and move. So playing a short bench will tire out players quicker during a game and will have a drastically more noticeable effect on the performance levels as well.

 

That's excellent news for update 1.4 that already looked promising ! 

Just curious Riz, I read you specifically talk about adjustments to playing a short bench.

In reference to my previous post about the tactic, will tactics also be part of the adjustments and the effects on players fatigue / condition ? Looking for this desired negative effect on performance if abusing maximum ''actions'' in tactical settings. i.e. telling players to go at maximum on everything like aggressiveness, backchecking, pressure, hitting, tempo, etc !  Or would this be something you would maybe look at in the future ? 

I believe that a team should under perform if setting all these 5 tactical settings to their maximum, compared to if they were left to normal. It should also connect closely with the length of a shift.

Maybe pushing one of those 5 ''energy'' slider one node to the right could count as a point spent and going over a certain amount of point starts to make a team under perform. Then the amount of points available to spend would be based on the shift length chosen (less points for longer shift) ? Forcing us to make choices on what we want the players / lines to spend a lot of their energy on when on shift ?

I really believe the tactic displayed above , when being used, is a huge exploit just like the 12 players roster. Both are connected to fatigue/condition.

Thanks very much again. 

 

P.s. : Just to show the effect of the said tactic, I have uploaded an image where I simulated 2 months of not using the tactic (October and January) and 2 months of using the tactic (November and December). This was done using TBL Roster 9.0b and I picked one of the worst 3 team in the league with the Arizona Coyotes. I know it's a very small sample but still gives an idea of how broken the tactic is. 

Oct. : 11G - 0 W  10 L  1 otL 
Nov.: 13G - 6 W  5 L  2 otL
Dec.: 15G - 11 W  4 L  0 otL
Jan,:  11G - 4 W  7 L  0 otL

 

6 hours ago, South-Side said:

@KoKid90

I used RED PlaymOver Barrage in my Jets save , alternating with others. I don't know about your save but in mine you cannot play it for a long period of time as it will break your 1st line. In my save it did just that , because it favors 1 line more than the others so you cannot use it for 3-4 games in a row as players get tired and do not recover in a short period of time. If you push them they get injured. And usually players on the first line play have  roles on other lines (PP,PK) also so the usage is greater.

 

It does not favor any lines, this setting is found in the General Team Options above. Also like you said, if you have players play one your 1st line, 1st PP, 1st PK and 1st ES. They will feel over played but this is not about the RED PlaymOver Barrage.

In my Habs game, I tested it also in playoffs where I lost the best of four 1-4 to the Pens.  I reloaded the game prior to game one and applied the RED PlaymOver Barrage tactic and then re simulated to win and sweep the Pens 4-0.

No doubt to me that this tactic is broken at the moment.

[Nino-33]

29 minutes ago, KoKid90 said:

Just curious Riz, I read you specifically talk about adjustments to playing a short bench.

In reference to my previous post about the tactic, will tactics also be part of the adjustments and the effects on players fatigue / condition ? Looking for this desired negative effect on performance if abusing maximum ''actions'' in tactical settings. i.e. telling players to go at maximum on everything like aggressiveness, backchecking, pressure, hitting, tempo, etc !  Or would this be something you would maybe look at in the future ? 

I really believe the tactic displayed above , when being used, is a huge exploit just like the 12 players roster. Both are connected to fatigue/condition.

The impression I got was the words "short bench" was in reference to the initial issue brought forward in this thread, the playing with only 12 players; as you note yourself, the short bench & the tactical issue are both connected to fatigue/condition.

I also thought Riz's reference to the "knock-on effects from these to the ability to complete actions and move" connected to the tactical issues (specifically the words "ability to complete actions and move" meant the increased fatigue was going to negatively affect the players ability to be successful when trying to play "maximum on all actions")

 

 

34 minutes ago, KoKid90 said:

Maybe pushing one of those 5 ''energy'' slider one node to the right could count as a point spent and going over a certain amount of point starts to make a team under perform. Then the amount of points available to spend would be based on the shift length chosen (less points for longer shift) ?

I don't think EHM works like this myself, where the game can be so influenced by so few inputs/variables (in this case "a certain amount of points" in tactics)...my understanding is the 2D simulation is an actual simulation, so you need to tweak things and then test the results in the simulation (the tweaking of fatigue/condition will affect everything that occurs in the game, and might and hopefully will make a constant use of the "maximum on all actions" tactic no longer unrealistically successful)

[KevT90]

It was a very rough and incomplete suggestion because then there's also individual attributes of each player's and their unique style of play and fitness level. Even though both icetime and tactics influence fatigue, they should not be equally balanced as it's still 2 distinctive things. One is for the total time spent performing actions and the other one is the intensity of those actions within that amount of time. I believe the second one should have a much greater effect on fatigue. Very intense actions are much more energy draining than performing medium intensity actions over a longer period of time. 

[Nino-33]

3 hours ago, KoKid90 said:

Even though both icetime and tactics influence fatigue, they should not be equally balanced as it's still 2 distinctive things. One is for the total time spent performing actions and the other one is the intensity of those actions within that amount of time. I believe the second one should have a much greater effect on fatigue. Very intense actions are much more energy draining than performing medium intensity actions over a longer period of time. 

I agree/makes sense to me!

I would think they weren't equally balanced previously/aren't going to be; as you say, I'd think that very intense actions would be the most energy draining, and with constant/heavy use of intense actions the hidden Attribute "Natural Fitness" would likely influence things moreso, including recovery from day-to-day as well as from shift-to-shift, in particular the ability to maintain such intensity later in games (and the Attribute "Stamina" would influence things moreso in regards to how long a player could maintain intense actions on a given shift, as well as within a game)

As you note, in addition to tactics and icetime there's also "there's also individual attributes of each player's and their unique style of play and fitness level" - which makes sense to me/I agree with!

 

[KevT90]

Great !

To me, I understood that Riz mentioned that fatigue would affect players actions and movements but not the other way around, how the nature of the actions (intensity) would affect the fatigue as well. The term short bench was mentioned but not the terms tactics or anything referring to the intensity of those tactics. 

Therefore I wanted to confirm / hear about this specific aspect without ambiguity  (how intensity of actions are/could affect fatigue).

[Riz Remes]

Yes, the improvements on the energy/condition (fatigue) modelling in the simulation would also cause some more extreme tactics to be less effective as playing at a high tempo would tire out your players quicker and in 1.4 the effects from playing tired players are more drastic. All the actions player takes in the simulation have an effect on his energy levels, so how much he does and at what intensity does also affect his fatigue outside of pure ice time alone.

However there are always more tweaks that can  be made to improve things further and I'm still planning on finetuning the 2D simulation further in the future updates. So I can look at the tactical effects off these extreme tactics specifically to see what can be improved in the simulation to balance things better.

[KevT90]

On 1/26/2017 at 05:10, Riz Remes said:

However there are always more tweaks that can  be made to improve things further and I'm still planning on finetuning the 2D simulation further in the future updates. So I can look at the tactical effects off these extreme tactics specifically to see what can be improved in the simulation to balance things better.

I also understand that I brought this only about a week before the 1.4 update which probably did not give much time to make changes to this aspect of the game. However, I also want to say that I don't see any in game changes in the latest patch made to the sim engine in regards to extreme tactics (referred to as RED PlaymOver Barrage in above posts). 

I have simulated a full season using the exact same parameters except for one using an extreme tactic and the other one leaving it to the coach (Use current tactic = no). I made sure that the games played by each player were very similar in both scenario. In this test, I even think that the no tactic sim had a slim advantage over the RED PlaymOver Barrage which is even better for the demonstration. I would not account the other way around. 

Here are the results for the no tactic : 

 

Here are the results for the RED PlaymOver Barrage : 

 

 

Finally something that I had also observed and wanted confirmation of was the total penalty minutes for both scenarios. It is a non sense that the extreme tactic with maximum aggressiveness and maximum hitting would result in having the second last (less) penalized team in the league ! The no tactic resulted in MTL being the 6th most penalized team ! 

 

I therefore see no change, I observe the same non sense tactic resulting in strange simulation stats (Pen. Min.) and over performance. It should make a team under perform ...

I love this game, but before adding new leagues and other type of extra content, I believe that some of the core aspects of the game (simulation/tactics) need some serious work. I will also make another test of the 12 players ''exploit'' and report them here so that we have an idea of how the latest tweaks of 1.4 affect total ice time fatigue since the effect of intensity is not doing as expected.

[KevT90]

Above post focused on the use of an extreme tactic alone after patch 1.4 . Here I combined the use of only 12 players for a full season and WITH the extreme tactic applied for the entire season as well. 

Although I had less success than using a fully dressed team with the extreme tactic, it was still very successful in which I did better than in the fully dressed team and no tactic simulation ...

Forwards Pacioretty and Radulov put in an amazing season playing over 31 min/game and under an extreme tactic (RED PlaymOver Barrage). 

I had finished 1st overall in earlier posts displaying the 12 players only using PIT (PIT have a much better 12 man roster than MTL) and had finished 3rd overall in the league with MTL as well as a written mention in this thread's first couple posts (prior to 1.4). 

I cannot draw any comparisons with this sim with before 1.4 since now I have combined both elements (12 players AND extreme tactic) which I had not done before. But to me that is enough to demonstrate that 12 players and extreme tactics are still a huge exploit (wetter used seperately or together) and a very inaccurate simulation of the fatigue aspect in general. A forward being told to give everything in every aspect of the game and every shift and rotating on 2 lines, playing over 31 min/game and racking close to 100 pts, not get tired, not get injured, is a not what I am looking for from a simulator.

Finally, I have also attached the Penalty Minutes and again using maximum aggressiveness and hitting resulted in me getting the 27th team in the league for Penalty Minutes. There is something wrong in this aspect because now playing maximum aggressiveness and hitting results in a team getting much less penalty minutes than any other much less aggressive approach. Therefore it's a win / win situation where you can bully your opponent and get less penalty minutes. I believe it even makes the other team get penalized more ... In my own save, using the extreme tactic, I often see getting anywhere between 5 to 11 PP / games. 

Also note the backup G getting ice time in 60 of the games in regular season. I believe this only occurs when playing with only 12 players.

The ''one fit all'' extreme tactic is the worse of all the problems I can observe and diminishes my interest in playing the game not only because it is a non sense exploit but also because it shows huge flaws in the tactical system and simulation engine overall. It removes the feeling that setting a tactical parameter a certain way actually makes it do what it is suppose to do. 

 

[Riz Remes]

The 1.4 changes for the 2D simulation were mainly aimed at the fatigue aspects of using only a limited number of players, not the usage of specific tactical settings. So I wasn't expecting it to affect too much on the usage of some super tactics yet. I have this on my list for the next (1.5) update, so will have a look at how these exploiting tactics can be better balanced.

[gerry58]

Disappointing,  this should be one of the core elements of the game.

[Riz Remes]

It is, but this particular exploitation tactic was only raised here one week before the 1.4 update, so it was too late to start analysing it and re-balancing the 2d simulation for it.

[KevT90]

I do appreciate you are trying to address these ''issues'' in future engine modifications !  As for the 12 players team, although it seems to be resulting in a small negative effect since 1.4, It is still very insignificant. (last post I did demonstrated that)

For the extreme tactic, if it can help, I have attached some screenshots of boxscore that shows how contradictory the extreme tactic is in regards to penalty minutes (see Power Plays for my team vs opposing teams). I had already attached screenshots of the league's team sorted by penalty minutes and I always, always finish in the top 5 of the less penalized team. This is while playing the entire season with the extreme tactics that has the parameters set to Maximum in : aggressiveness, pressure, hitting, tempo. This might be one of the biggest factor for this kind of tactic being so successful, since there is no drawbacks to paying such way. In fact, it makes you take much less penalties and appears to provoke the other team in taking much more, it should be the total opposite ! The fatigue aspect is also a major factor, because it allows you to use such a very intense and physical play-style without any drawbacks there either ! 

Thanks again for the attention given to this in order to improve the gameplay !

 

[kidhander1983]

Well, I think you jump to conclusions a bit too much. Of course it is as unrealistic as you say, but regarding penalty minutes and hitting, for example, in all the games you attached a screenshot of, the Habs outshot badly the opposition (check also blocked shots). While this also has in part to be considered in light of PP time, this also means that probably the gung-ho tactic gives the team a lot of offensive zone time, which leads to less PIMs and more PIMs on the opposition. Hits are on par with the opposition, hit hard doesn't mean hit dirty.

Btw your habs are some 100 PIMs less than the Oilers, it makes for one penalty and a half a game. Not too much.

Comparing with IRL NHL numbers, I'd say that the game lacks PIMs overally speaking and this may have some influence.

[Nino-33]

2 hours ago, kidhander1983 said:

regarding penalty minutes and hitting, for example.....

But it's not just penalty minutes related to maximum hitting, it's penalty minutes related to maximum hitting + maximum aggressiveness + maximum pressure

Given that the Aggressiveness Attribute "primarily affects a player's penalty totals/willingness to fight" maximum aggressiveness should produce significant penalty minutes