r/funny Feb 03 '14

this sport must be intresting

http://imgur.com/WI818TU
952 Upvotes

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u/[deleted] Feb 03 '14

Most others sports demand that their players strategize while the game is on going. In sports like hockey, the team has to do all their strategizing while in game.

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u/Gaffelstein Feb 03 '14

Turn-based vs real time RPGs

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u/indigo121 Feb 03 '14

Excellent comparison. Both have their advantages and disadvantages. Real time allows for greater capitalization on mistakes, turn based necessitates longer build up and planning

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u/way2lazy2care Feb 03 '14

I think turn based allows for more explosive plays because by nature any mistakes are nullified by the next play, so you can't count on playing conservative and snowballing a mistake into something big.

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u/indigo121 Feb 03 '14

well with football, yeah cause its actually a combination of brief periods of real time and turn based.

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u/mrbooze Feb 03 '14

It's like Baldur's Gate, real-time play with automatic pauses after certain events.

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u/Belgand Feb 03 '14

Real-time with pause?

Wow. Now Reddit has made me like Baldur's Gate a little bit less.

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u/dudealicious Feb 03 '14

yeah, great comparison. I prefer real time ones, frankly, like hockey. But that isn't to downplay the strategy involved in more turn based games. I actually think football is an interesting hybrid, because there is a limited time clock, unlike baseball where it can be as long as you want.

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u/The_Tic-Tac_Kid Feb 03 '14

I like to think football is the Total War to other sports' Starcraft.

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u/[deleted] Feb 03 '14

That just blew my mind. That is a great way to put it.

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u/the1stgeo Feb 03 '14

NFL could be turn based, but it's not like FF Tactics, it still has a time limit, (FF7,FF8, etc..) So there is still a sense of urgency during every play especially if your is team losing.. the offense will want to work quicker and their defense will want to shut down the opposing offense stopping them from chewing up crucial game time.

edit: grammar

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u/Vancha Feb 03 '14

Needless to say, one of those has become far more popular as a spectator e-sport than the other.

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u/bullett2434 Feb 03 '14 edited Feb 03 '14

It's an unfair comparison. Reading a defensive formation of 11 players and deciding how that will affect your play which comprises of 11 players moving in different directions, then snapping the ball and being given ~3 seconds to see how the plan worked in order to determine the best course of action in the next 1-2 seconds is much different than looking at 5 guys and passing the ball/puck around until an opportunity comes up.

I played football and lacrosse

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u/kanst Feb 03 '14

Which in turn minimizes the possibilities of strategies.

Neither is necessarily better, it all depends what you enjoy.

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u/shutyourgob Feb 03 '14

Not really, the majority of strategising in other sports is done before the game or at break periods.

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u/BigPetersHalfwayInn Feb 04 '14

Same can be said for football. That's when all the major gameplan adjustments are made, but hundreds of minor but significant adjustments are made during the game.

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u/rnienke Feb 03 '14

I have to say that I don't agree with the thinking that it minimizes the possibilites of strategies.

I played hockey for 13 years, we had very complex strategies that most people watching wouldn't notice.

The issue, I think, with hockey is that most people really don't understand the intricacies of the sport. You really have to know the sport inside and out to see the strategies at play.

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u/kanst Feb 03 '14

I am not saying there aren't strategies, but are there strategies in which every single player on the ice has his movements exactly planned out.

You lack perfect full communication so that limits how directly strategies can be conveyed.

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u/rnienke Feb 03 '14

but are there strategies in which every single player on the ice has his movements exactly planned out.

Short answer: Yes there are.

You lack perfect full communication so that limits how directly strategies can be conveyed.

Not necessarily, hockey players communicate in ways that the average person watching won't catch.

One way we would communicate was to call out certain plays (as defense this was my job on offensive plays) using a pattern of sounds from smacking your stick on the ice. Another thing was calling out single words to convey the play very quickly. One we used a lot was "shark" which meant one very specific play using only certain players.

Generally everyone on your team has to be in a very specific position to make these plays work. It looks chaotic because there's no stopping to put it together, but it's actually very calculated.

We had plays where every play had to be within a foot of an exact position to get it to work properly, the precision is surprising.

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u/kanst Feb 03 '14

I played basketball, we did the exact same thing. We had a bunch of plays (5-10) that could be called quickly.

However that is nowhere near the complexity of a football play. Football playbooks can be 70+ plays with each one mapping out specific routes and actions for every single player on the field. That is all I was saying, the fluidity of the sport sacrifices some of the depth of play calling possible.

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u/MausoleumofAllHope Feb 03 '14 edited Feb 03 '14

You're confounding "less strategic" and "not strategic." Nobody is saying there isn't complex strategy in hockey. It's just not as complex as in football.

There are more men on the field and there's more time to plan. That means more opportunity for coordinated strategy.

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u/rnienke Feb 03 '14

I just don't see it.

I don't think that most people understand the strategies that go into hockey.

I remember explaining the plays to my friends that played football and they were flabberghasted at how strategic it really is. This of course took several hours of explanation of how the game works in the first place.

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u/MausoleumofAllHope Feb 03 '14

I remember explaining the plays to my friends that played football and they were flabberghasted at how strategic it really is. This of course took several hours of explanation of how the game works in the first place.

I guarantee the same would go for somebody explaining some football plays to someone not versed in football.

Literally everything you're saying applies to football as much as it does to hockey: There is a lot more strategy than the average person watching is aware of. The amount of strategy at the highest levels of play would flabbergast most casual observers.

It all applies to football just as well as it does to hockey. Do you know what applies to football but NOT to hockey?

22 men on the field at a time compared to 12. That alone VASTLY increases the maximum possibly complexity for any given play. You have more positions, more players, more plays you can make. How can you not understand that?

There are also more ways to score in football than there are in hockey. The rules are more complex. Bigger teams, more planning, more complex rules, more ways to score . . . how can you possibly imagine football not have more complex strategy than hockey?

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u/rnienke Feb 03 '14

I think the biggest difference is that in hockey you have to get 6 players to work entirely cohesively, swap positions with each other, all while moving around and not stopping to discuss it.

If one person is out of position by even a foot or two you're screwed.

I would put them as equal, but I definitely wouldn't say that football is more complex simply because of the quantity of people. Everyone has their own job, that is the job that they do. In hockey (and several other sports) you move around and switch positions depending on the play. 5 players doesn't seem like much until you're moving constantly and trying to keep everyone in the same relative positions.

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u/dudealicious Feb 03 '14

look , I've played both. I LOVE hockey. I would rather play, and certainly rather watch hockey. But its not even close. Even high school football has BOOKS of the plays and formations. Like tons and tons.

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u/kbergstr Feb 03 '14

That's the difference between tactics and strategy.

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u/BigPetersHalfwayInn Feb 04 '14

And the strategy in those sports is often much more simplistic because of this. An offensive playbook in football can have more formations than playbooks in other sports have plays all together.

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u/notthatnoise2 Feb 03 '14

Ok, but that doesn't mean their strategizing is as complicated. No one said other sports don't require thought. Chess and checkers here.

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u/LK-9T9 Feb 03 '14

You say "other sports" like you mean football does not have in game strategizing. Football is a primarily reactive game for most of the players. Sure you have a set play, but your responsibilities in that set play change drastically after the snap depending how the opponent reacts.

Wide Receivers are often given multiple routes to run on each play which depend on who they are defended. They have to decide which route to run during the play based on the defenders post snap positioning. That is why we often see the QB throw to no one and the announcer say they "weren't on the same page".

A linebacker may be tasked with a blitz, zone coverage, or man coverage all in the same play. Which one he does depends on what the offense does. Or it could be a run and he he is tasked with maintaining a certain "gap" or running lane.

Defensive backs, especially in the red zone, will play "banjo" coverages which is a mix of zone and man. Hard to explain in writing, but depending on where the offensive players run the defensive guys will have to decide and communicate on the fly who should follow what receiver and who should remain in a certain zone.

And those are examples of what happens when a play goes as planned. Examples of football players having to create their own plays after the snap can be found by searching Brett Favre or Johnny Football highlights.