NationStates Jolt Archive

An inquiry was posted on another thread as to whether or not there was going to be another American Football World Championship. Because I am not sure how many people will actually read that thread, I have decided to create a new thread here. The timing of the inquiry seems right because most of the World Cup nations are likely viewing this board now in some capacity.

As a big fan of American Football, I am very willing to not just start one World Championship, but attempt to create a championship series that will have frequent regularity like the World Baseball Classic has. Comparing it to the World Cup is a little too ambitious, I think!

I have read that the problem with American football never getting off the ground has been because there has never been a scorinator ever developed truly for it. Well, my friends, I have thought up a way to make the soccer scorinator work to produce football scores. Here’s the concept:

– Style modifier systems of -5 to +5 remain the same, this can allow you, like in soccer, to create your team to have an offensive or defensive focus.
– Each game is scorinated twice using the soccer scorinator. The first score will be the number of touchdowns scored by the team. The second number, the number of field goals. Example: Soccer scorinator on first try gives a score of Team A 2, Team B 1. These numbers are then multiplied by 7 to make it Team A 14, Team B 7. The second scorinator try produces a score of Team B 3, Team A 2. These numbers are then multipled by 3 to give a FG score of Team B 9, Team A 6. Adding these to the TD score, the game gets a result of Team A 20, Team B 16. A nice, normal, American Football score.
– Its not perfect, I know, but I think it’s pretty good. Team B could role play their 16 in anyway they wanted, whether it was one TD, and three FG’s, or two TD’s plus a safety, etc. The intention is just to give it a sense of a normal football game.
– A game requiring OT would be scorinated a third time. If team A “won” by more then “1 goal” in the soccer simulation, they will win by a TD in the game. If it was just by 1, they will win by a FG. If it ends up being a tie, a “second OT” will be processed.

I am open to question, comments and constructive criticism. But if only intend to criticize without the intention of helping this project get off the ground, then please do not bother.

If you are interested in participating in such a league, please respond on this thread. I will give the league a go if a minimum of eight nations sign up. I have a lot of experience hosting leagues within my region, and know you have to be willing to smart small to get something like this off the ground. Games will be scorinated once every three days in the understanding that this league would not be your main RP’ing priority initially.

The van Prooijen University athletic department is interested in entering any future international gridiron competition.

OOC:

Is there any way that two-point tries could be worked into the scorinator? With the system you propose, it’s hard to get a score that would allow for a successful two-point try to be RPed (a touchdown and three field goals would be equivalent to two touchdowns with two-point tries, which is unusual; five field goals would be equivalent to a normal touchdown and one with a two-point try, but that’d only happen with high style modifiers).

Also, is your system for overtime supposed to replicate the NFL format or the NCAA format?

OOC:

Is there any way that two-point tries could be worked into the scorinator? With the system you propose, it’s hard to get a score that would allow for a successful two-point try to be RPed (a touchdown and three field goals would be equivalent to two touchdowns with two-point tries, which is unusual; five field goals would be equivalent to a normal touchdown and one with a two-point try, but that’d only happen with high style modifiers).

That is the trouble, as you can't really compensate for a team's decisions as to whether to try specifically for one or two points: '2 Pt after attempt failed' followed swiftly by "I'd never try for two points!" is bound to happen.

The uber-simple scorinator of mine that does the BoF/Di Bradini Cup was originally set up for the Rugby (Union) World Cup, With Tries, Conversions, Penalties and Drop Goals (equivalent, of course, to TDs, Points-after, Field Goals and... no real equivalent to Drop Goals). The only problem being that it can't, as yet, look after OverTime or 2 point conversions.

You highlight the real drawback of the system. No way to really incorporate two-point conversions, or missed extra points. If anyone has an idea on how to do this, please suggest. Other then that, I believe it can work well.

OT is designed to have an NFL playoff format.

Could you allow teams to specify how frequently they'd go for two on the average? For example, 20% of the time. Then for every touchdown, generate an extra number. If it's above .2, treat as if they went for 1*; below .2 treat as if they went for 2*. If it's .2 exactly, reboot the laws of probability and try again.

*You assume any extra point would be automatically made; I'd suggest introducing some randomness there too, with lower frequencies if they go for 2. It should probably be twice as hard, otherwise people will try to find the "best" style.

This is really complicated, I know, but just some ideas. Good luck. :)

Well, extra points can be handled with some probability thing. After each touchdown, you do a separate check for that, with some high non-100 probability of making it. If you felt really ambitious, you could build some decision logic into whether the team goes for 1 or 2 based on the score and time of game, but that approaches the realm of simulation ^_^ And if THAT happens... well... I'd like to draw a distinction between offenses centered on the run versus the pass with the style modifiers, and aaaaaaaaah I'm a horrible person and making life difficult.

and aaaaaaaaah I'm a horrible person and making life difficult.

Yes. Very. :p

Starting with your second point, if I wanted a heavy pass based offense, I would go with a +5 as opposed to heavy run based offense, which I would say would be more of a +2 or so, since running the ball is more conservative and chews up more clock in reality.

I do like the extra point idea though. Going for two is when this really gets tricky. Zwangzug's idea would work, in theory, but runs into the whole dilemma of "I never would have gone for 2 in that situation!!" Of course, whatever the actual situation was would be unknown anyway so maybe that can work.

Yes, upon further review, I am a jerk :-D

After thinking about it for a bit, you're right, you could RP your style based on modifier pretty easily, it would probably fall out of the the way scorinating works that +5 vs -5 is tough, while +5 vs +2 heavily favors the offense which puts up points fast, and -5 vs -2 will just be low scoring, three yards and a cloud of dirt (which is how it should be done).

For how to assign points, so, I'm not sure if all the scoring events are generated at once with some insane complicated formula, or if they all come out one at a time. In regulation, for each scoring event, you determine whether it's a touchdown or field goal based on the style modifiers and then a fudge factor to get some randomness in there. As an example, I would expect the -5 team to hold more often and give up more field goals as opposed to touchdowns, while the +5 team is just the opposite. For extra points and field goals, you have non-zero probability of missing (much smaller for extra points), and for two points... well, I still think if you want to just fudge it, you can make the "go for it" probability small enough, but it's probably safe to throw it out all together and let RPs handle it.

Speaking of two point scores, that bring up a complicating factor - a good defense will get you points, straight up, through turnovers and safeties. You could add some logic into scoring event generation that lets a strong defense get the odd runback every now and then, although in practice you might be able to just ignore them entirely and let RPs handle it.

In overtime, you could stop at the first scoring event, or if they all come out at once, pick the team that gets more. In case of a tie, yeah, either do it again or flip a coin. It doesn't need to be complicated, although my first attempt ideas tend to be :-D

I have read that the problem with American football never getting off the ground has been because there has never been a scorinator ever developed truly for it.

Here I will have to disagree with you. I actually did develop a true American football scorinator for when I hosted one of these. Well, okay, it was actually a bit more of a simulator, but that problem is easily taken care of by only posting the final score.

It could use some tweaking, though, as I seem to recall that it generated really high scores way too often. Not every game is between Nebraska and Colorado. :p

This thread is reminding me to get my Dwarfbowl stuff posted somewhere. Little bit of American Football, little bit of rugby, little bit of fighting and a lot of Dwarves!

This thread is reminding me to get my Dwarfbowl stuff posted somewhere. Little bit of American Football, little bit of rugby, little bit of fighting and a lot of Dwarves!

Sounds like fun! I'd go for it.

The karelan American Football team are always up for, um, sacking opposing quarterbacks. Sure.

It could use some tweaking, though, as I seem to recall that it generated really high scores way too often. Not every game is between Nebraska and Colorado. :p

Wheeeeeee, inadvertent arena football scorinator!!

Hmm. One possible approach to this is to assert that each team has a certain number of drives, and the probability of it being a TD/FG/punt/turnover (in the last case, the opposition could have an 'extra drive'?) is a function of the teams' offensive and defensive abilities (rank +/- style modifiers).

Not sure.

But I'm interested in participating in whatever comes out.

the champiopns of the Gridiron world whatever would be up for it again, but i'd need to see a foolproof scorinator.

First off, thanks everyone for the feedback.

I )Ok, the plan now is to originally scorinate as planned in the opening post.
II) Extra points/2 point conversions:
A) Dancougar’s great idea would be utilized for extra points/failed extra points. I’m thinking a 95% success rate sounds about right.
B)Two point conversion attempts will be done the same way, with a 40% success rate. (That seems like about the NFL equivalent.) When to go for 2-point conversions, the nation will provide me one of five options: always, aggressively, logically, rarely, or never.
1) always/never= Self explanatory. You will either always kick an extra point or always go for two, no matter what.
2) aggressively= You will go for two every other TD.
3) rarely= You will never go for two unless the game situation absolutely, positively has you benefitting from such an effort.
4) logically= Here’s where it gets good. If the end result has you losing by one, and you scored at least one TD with an extra point, you will then have the extra point processed as a 2-point conversion and the shot at getting that additional point. If you lost by two, and you had at least 2 TD’s, you will get 2 cracks at 2-point conversions, and so on.

I think this sounds good. Let me know what you all think.

Vephrall: It was more in my search of threads here about American Football competitions that I got the vibe that the lack of a true scorinator devoted to Am. Football was an insurmountable obstacle. I did see the thread you spoke of where you did a Cup, and that's what got my hopes up that this could be done!

Dancougar: A TD could be interpreted anyway you wanted it in a RP. 3-yard TD run, 5 yard TD pass. 85 yard INT return for TD, kickoff return, blocked FG return, etc. etc. Right now though, I am looking to do this in a simple but effective manner. This seems like a good way to get the sport on the radar, and in time if it all works out

Kura-Pelland: First off, congrats on your WC qualifying win! My problem with your suggestion though is having a set number of drives per game, as all games will be different. Two offensive minded, pass oriented teams will have much more drivers then two grind it out defensively oriented teams.

Newmanistan, you could always just use NCAA Football or Madden (NCAA gives your more create-a-team options)

I KNOW I KNOW NO "VIDEO GAMES AS A SIMULATOR"

Why the heck not? They do the hard damn work for you!

Qazox is interested, but is not willing to commit until the scorinator stuff is figured out.

As for your percentages:

NFL: 98% of extra point attempts are converted.
2-pt tries are about 1 out of every 15 attempts and are converted about 30% of the time.

As for figuring out 2-pt conversions:
The logically part seems to be a repeat of the rare. (cause that's when you'd go for 2 anyway when you absolutely need to)

Suggest:
Always: (every TD)
Aggressively: (three of every 4 TD's attempt 2-pts)
Mostly: (two of every 4 TD's)
Rarely: (Once every 4 TD's)
Only when needed (self explanitory)

Dancougar: A TD could be interpreted anyway you wanted it in a RP. 3-yard TD run, 5 yard TD pass. 85 yard INT return for TD, kickoff return, blocked FG return, etc. etc. Right now though, I am looking to do this in a simple but effective manner. This seems like a good way to get the sport on the radar, and in time if it all works out

Yeah, that's definitely true, and a simplifying factor in any design you go with. I think that the only point I was trying to make was that, for the most accurate simulation (ugh, there's that word again!), you would need to factor defensive strength into determining when touchdowns occur, on top of offensive. But that's probably an unnecessary complicating factor. If you were doing simulation, though, KP's drives idea is right on.

And Qazox is right, extra point success ratio is definitely higher than 95%.

The more I think about Kura-Pelland's "drives" idea, the more the concept intrigues me. For the next little bit, I'm gonna think about a good formula/system using this and trying to implement it. It may take longer to do a game individually, but it could be worth it.

In the meantime, if you haven't expressed interest in this league yet, please do so. I think we're on the way to getting a workable solution here and an official sign up thread could be forthcoming by the weekend.

Meh. Computers are fast. If you wanted to simulate and it takes longer, you can always use threads... (Dodges a missile.) Probably the best thing to do is implement something simple, see how it works, then add bells and whistles. I never get far with anything since I have a bad habit of overcomplicating from the start (Gee, couldn't you tell? ^_^)

I'm not gonna worry about finding the perfect realistic formula anymore. Later I'll post what I feel is a realistic forumla & setup and if it gets interest, it gets interest. And if it doesn't, it doesn't.

It's kind of disappointing to me too, that this thread falls to the bottom of the page during the prime hours for Americans to be on.

Yeah, at the very least, it should take into account style mods and some reasonable randomness. It doesn't have to be terribly complicated. I wish I had more free time to help out, but I'm definitely interested in whatever comes out of it.

When this gets started I'll be glad to enter a team. I'm not going to try and help out with the scorinating though, I don't have a full enough understanding of American Football (outside of watching the superbowl religiously) to contribute anything worthwhile.

I'm looking forward to this though!

Thanks everyone for their help, and in particular, to Dancougar.

Tomorrow around this time, I will start up a sign up thread and see what we get. I'll also give final word about how games will be scorinated, though it will not vary much from what I posted about eight posts back. The drives suggestion i thought was good, but I really couldn't come up with a good solution utilizing that of which I felt comfortable with.

As far as a name. I was thinking perhaps World Bowl, NS Bowl.... give me suggestions for that if you want, too.

Thanks everyone for their help, and in particular, to Dancougar.

Tomorrow around this time, I will start up a sign up thread and see what we get. I'll also give final word about how games will be scorinated, though it will not vary much from what I posted about eight posts back. The drives suggestion i thought was good, but I really couldn't come up with a good solution utilizing that of which I felt comfortable with.

As far as a name. I was thinking perhaps World Bowl, NS Bowl.... give me suggestions for that if you want, too.

How about the PRUX BOWL??? As we'll win this easy.

As far as a name. I was thinking perhaps World Bowl, NS Bowl.... give me suggestions for that if you want, too.

Hmm... "The Big Game at the End" is already taken ^_^

I like World Bowl. Simple and says everything that needs to be said.

Do we have any more news on this yet?