Strat-O-Matic Baseball 365

I love baseball and this game. But, does Strat have a online football game? I would really like to play a game like this for football.

Used to but it didn't have any playoffs. I think I played one time and went 7-9 or 8-8. Gannon was my starting QB. That's all I remember.

wavygravy2k wrote:Used to but it didn't have any playoffs. I think I played one time and went 7-9 or 8-8. Gannon was my starting QB. That's all I remember.

I miss the football, I liked it even without playoffs and would have gladly continued to play it. I think a lot of people did stop playing because of the lack of a playoff system. Another thing that was odd was that everybody got really pissed about penalties, so they removed them. That led to fewer downs with longer distances to go for the first down which de-valued the QB's who could pass short and long well and over-valued those with awesome flat pass columns. Had it's flaws for sure, but still fun to play and I'd spend my money on it if they brought it back as is, just with the new player cards.

KellysHeroes wrote:I love baseball and this game. But, does Strat have a online football game? I would really like to play a game like this for football.

They did have, but it did not translate real well. If you've played the strat football board game, you know how that can change play to play, and part of the charm/fun/strategy/challenge of that game is the chess match that goes on between the offensive play caller and the defensive coach, trying to guess what the offense will do and move his players into positions to counter.

The online game could never capture that play to play dynamic, it simply was not a good game in this format.

I LOVE the football board game and find it vastly superior to the baseball board game, but the online game was not good, not good at all.

Actually I would have never been here if not for that SOM online football game. I did not grow up with, or ever hear of, strat before I found the football game. It was a pack of 12 of us that kept it alive as long as it did. I tried baseball AFTER football closed down and I had a bunch of credits left.

I'd still play it... even with it's quirks.

Geekor, I'm with you. I played many, many teams in TSN's on line football game. It was a blast despite the difficulty of setting up an offense and defense for an entire quarter (or was it a half?). Very frustrating and also very rewarding but lots of fun.

I tried the online football and did not like it. For me it was not the lack of playoffs that was a problem. It was just the way it translated to online. Ninersphan did a good job of describing that. Making general changes by quarter/game just was not the same. Instead of feeling somewhat like strat the online football took the black boxy feel to another level.

There was another disconnect with drafting defensive players. You just had the ratings and each rating was worth a certain amount. So one 6 rated defensive end cost the same as another. Hard to say after your draft if you had a team that would have a good pass rush or not, good or bad run defense, etc. The board game back when I played had team defense cards so when I drafted back then we would draft the run defense for Baltimore or the pass defense card for Miami. With the online game you assumed they were somehow generating team defense cards but how and what was a mystery.

Then there was the offense. You drafted your offensive players and then picked your offense preference. Forget the exact terminology they used. But remember it was west coast offense, etc. You think it is tough deciding what Hal is going to do when you tell him aggressive, normal, or conservative for base stealing or relief usage, try guessing exactly what choosing from a dozen offense styles will get Hal to do. Was my concept of the west coast offense going to be the same as Hal?

I'm sure an online version of SOM Football would not be for everyone for some very good reasons given above. However, if they could come up with a better iteration of it, I think it could still be a hit. However, the work involved to make a version worth playing will probably keep it from ever happening. It would be a big risk for the company to make that kind of investment.

Anybody in the Tampa Bay area that would be interested in live face to face football play?

coyote303 wrote:I'm sure an online version of SOM Football would not be for everyone for some very good reasons given above. However, if they could come up with a better iteration of it, I think it could still be a hit. However, the work involved to make a version worth playing will probably keep it from ever happening. It would be a big risk for the company to make that kind of investment.

Plus it would now have to overcome the history of the previous effort.

I am not much of a fan for SOM sports, save for baseball. Some of the feeling is based on material issues, other is as simple as the terminology. I tried the computer version of College football, it was ok, but get put off by terms like "line buck," which leaves me feeling I am reading a book written about the Army-Navy game of 1950...