05-31-2021, 07:08 PM
(This post was last modified: 06-03-2021, 04:31 AM by Asked Madden.
Edit Reason: Biggified the headers
)
2x voucher redemption
Introduction
As part of the last sim migration, there was a large revamp of all positions/archetypes. One of the biggest changes was the introduction of traits, an archetype-specific customization option slightly different than stats. I explored the costs of getting the traits before the migration was done. Now that it's been a couple seasons, I'm going to look at what adoption of the traits has looked like.
As one side note: I had an implicit hypothesis in that article that each archetype had one central trait that people were intended to be building towards. From what I've seen, that's not quite what has happened. It would be interesting to see if I was at least correct in identifying which trait ended up getting purchased first most often correctly, but my primary means of gathering data (the TPE tracker) doesn't seem to do a great job of trait tracking and so I'm not going to check that out here.
A couple data cleanliness notes: Data was gathered from the TPE tracker on 5/29 mostly before update. I ignored any player in the tracker with an archetype from before the migration and then additionally any with -999 competitiveness in the tracker (which I think is the case for players where they were in an archetype which didn't have a name change but who did not do the migration to the new sim), though it's possible I discarded some valid players which have player pages that the TPE tracker is failing to parse or something. A number of players have pending regressions (usually denoted by "THIS PLAYER MUST BE REGRESSED TO X TPE BEFORE BEING USED IN A LINEUP" on their player page); I generally removed those from analysis because the math for their TPE showed more spent than their current values. There were also a few other players which seemed to have some discrepancies (eg more TPE in stats than the tracker was reporting), which seemed to be for collection of unrelated issues (player/update page disagreement, inactives with a negative bank due to points getting rescinded, etc.) and I generally rounded any negative banks to zero for analysis. I inspected some players (especially those with banks in excess of the cost of a trait) to see if the tracker was failing the pull the data correctly and many of those were late enough that they were including 5/29 update information hopefully that introduces small magnitude of errors, but it does decrease the consistency of the data.
For exploring the positions, I will place the players in the tiers I defined in my previous article. For reference, those were
1. To the point where the position's most expensive trait could be purchased
2. 1 but with the cost of the trait added
3. 2 and then maxing all stats considered high priority in the previous stat priority recommendations. Since competitiveness is new, I'm going to assume its importance is the same as endurance as a heuristic.
4. 3 plus any other stats required to get all remaining traits
5. 4 plus those traits
6. All remaining stats to max
I'll be counting those players as being in the tier once they've hit the minimum of that but not the minimum of the next one. So, as 200 TPE Gunslinger QB would be tier 1 (more than 160 TPE, less than 210) while a 100 TPE player would be tier zero.
One other note - I consider only TPE that could be spent for looking at percentages. So, if a player has 1500 TPE but the position only uses 1300 at max, I ignore the 200 over that cap for the percentages (though I do sum up the amount over the cap). For players in the DSFL, I counted TPE over the 250 DSFL cap similarly since it also can't be spent right now. That excess TPE is summed in the various breakdowns for reference but it is not used in the spent TPE percentages (specifically, it's not counted as banked TPE in the percentage calculation).
QB
After the data sanitization, there are 25 QBs. 15 of those are on ISFL teams, 10 are on DSFL teams, and none are free agents.
Gunslinger (expected capstone trait: Gunslinger) - 5 players (2 ISFL / 3 DSFL)
2 tier 3 (2 ISFL) - 1/2 with the trait
3 tier 2 (3 DSFL) - 0/3 with the trait
Total: 1/5 players have the trait
No other purchased traits
For all Gunslinger QBs:
* 97.84% of TPE is spent on stats
* 2% is spent on traits
* 0.16% is banked
* There is 244 TPE that players have which cannot be spent due to being over caps
For just the ISFL Gunslinger QBs:
* 96.91% of TPE is spent on stats
* 2.86% is spent on traits
* 0.23% is banked
* There is 0 TPE that players have which cannot be spent due to being over caps
All 3 DSFL gunslingers are over the DSFL maximum for TPE, which I think is the main reason to see high banked percentage for all gunslingers. The two ISFL players are fairly close in total TPE (both tier 3 and in the 800-900 range) so seeing one with the trait and one without it is interesting.
Pocket Passer (expected capstone trait: Game manager) - 8 players (6 ISFL / 2 DSFL)
2 tier 6 (2 ISFL) - 2/2 with the trait
1 tier 5 (1 ISFL) - 1/1 with the trait
1 tier 4 (1 ISFL) - 1/1 with the trait
3 tier 2 (2 ISFL 1 DSFL) - 2/3 with the trait
1 tier 1 (1 DSFL) - 0/1 with the trait
Total: 6/8 players have the trait
Other traits:
* Athlete: 3/8
* Role model: 2/8
For all Pocket Passer QBs:
* 86.07% of TPE is spent on stats
* 13.06% is spent on traits
* 0.88% is banked
* There is 341 TPE that players have which cannot be spent due to being over caps
For just the ISFL Gunslinger QBs:
* 84.1% of TPE is spent on stats
* 14.81% is spent on traits
* 1.09% is banked
* There is 51 TPE that players have which cannot be spent due to being over caps
With pocket passers making up something like 40% of ISFL starters, it's interesting to see all of them with the game manager trait. The tier 5 and 6 players have more traits too, but all the lower ones have it which suggests it's fairly important.
Field General (expected capstone trait: Game manager) - 7 players (6 ISFL / 1 DSFL)
2 tier 6 (2 ISFL) - 2/2 with the trait
3 tier 5 (3 ISFL) - 3/3 with the trait
1 tier 4 (1 ISFL) - 0/1 with the trait
1 tier 0 (1 DSFL) - 0/1 with the trait
Total: 5/7 players have the trait
Other traits:
* Athlete: 3/7
* Role model: 3/7
For all Field General QBs:
* 88.88% of TPE is spent on stats
* 10.81% is spent on traits
* 0.31% is banked
* There is 19 TPE that players have which cannot be spent due to being over caps
For just the ISFL Field General QBs:
* 84.64% of TPE is spent on stats
* 11.05% is spent on traits
* 0.3% is banked
* There is (still) 19 TPE that players have which cannot be spent due to being over caps
The other major ISFL starter achetype also is deeply bought into the capstone trait. Sabercats QB Monty Jack is a noteable exception - despite being over 1000 TPE, he doesn't have it (or any others). Has he seen stats be more useful in testing? His 1045 TPE worth of stats is narrowly ahead of Suleiman Ramza's 1010, but those are both close to the position's cap of 1090 so maybe the gap doesn't matter much.
Scrambler (expected capstone trait: Dual threat) - 2 players (0 ISFL / 2 DSFL)
2 tier 0 (2 DSFL) - 0/2 with the trait
Total: 0/2 players have the trait
No other traits
For all Scrambler QBs:
* 100% of TPE is spent on stats
* 0% is spent on traits
* 0% is banked
* There is 63 TPE that players have which cannot be spent due to being over caps
With only DSFL QBs and the minimum TPE required to max core stats for scramblers being over the DSFL cap, it makes sense that no players have it purchased. It'll be interesting to see when Luchadors QB IsHe... ReallyInvisible gets called up and then how high of a priority dual threat ends up being.
Mobile (expected capstone trait: Dual threat) - 3 players (0 ISFL / 3 DSFL)
1 tier 2 (1 DSFL) - 0/1 with the trait
2 tier 0 (2 DSFL) - 0/2 with the trait
Total: 0/3 players have the trait
No other traits
For all Mobile QBs:
* 99.83% of TPE is spent on stats
* 0% is spent on traits
* 0.17% is banked
* There is 293 TPE that players have which cannot be spent due to being over caps
Much like the scramblers, there are no ISFL players here which puts a strong roadblock in front of getting the stats for the trait in the first place. SeaWolves QB Raeni Clarke has enough TPE to potentially get it, but the DSFL cap prevents that from being an option and I'll again be interested to see where it gets prioritized after callup.
RB
There are 55 RBS - 36 ISFL, 16 DSFL, and 3 FAs.
Speed Back (expected capstone trait: Athlete) - 21 players (15 ISFL / 6 DSFL)
4 tier 5 (4 ISFL) - 4/4 with the trait
4 tier 4 (4 ISFL) - 4/4 with the trait
5 tier 2 (5 ISFL) - 1/5 with the trait
2 tier 1 (1 ISFL / 1 DSFL) - 0/2 with the trait
6 tier 0 (6 DSFL) - 0/6 with the trait
Total: 9/21 players have the trait
Other traits:
* Scat back: 8/21
* Raw talent: 7/21
* Role model: 2/21
For all Speed Back RBs:
* 84.5% of TPE is spent on stats
* 14.38% is spent on traits
* 1.12% is banked
* There is 178 TPE that players have which cannot be spent due to being over caps
For just the ISFL Speed Back RBs:
* 83.57% of TPE is spent on stats
* 15.32% is spent on traits
* 1.1% is banked
* There is 0 TPE that players have which cannot be spent due to being over caps
A much deeper archetype than any of the QB roles shows that the position does seem to find traits to be important. Athlete does narrowly edge out scat back and raw talent for popularity but all three are clearly popular. The tier 2 players do have some diversity of approaches - I see different stat prioritization and some going more trait heavy, which I assume is the kind of outcome that the migration team was looking for.
Receiving Back (expected capstone trait: Athlete) - 12 players (8 ISFL / 2 DSFL / 2 free agents)
1 tier 5 (1 ISFL) - 0/1 with the trait
1 tier 3 (1 ISFL) - 0/1 with the trait
5 tier 2 (5 ISFL) - 0/5 with the trait
1 tier 1 (1 ISFL) - 0/1 with the trait
4 tier 0 (2 DSFL / 2 free agent) - 0/4 with the trait
Total: 0/12 players have the trait
Other traits:
* Scat back: 2/12
For all Receiving Back RBs:
* 92.37% of TPE is spent on stats
* 1.8% is spent on traits
* 5.83% is banked
* There is 0 TPE that players have which cannot be spent due to being over caps
For just the ISFL Receiving Back RBs:
* 91.57% of TPE is spent on stats
* 2.02% is spent on traits
* 6.42% is banked
* There is (still) 0 TPE that players have which cannot be spent due to being over caps
This shows a clear whiff on guessing the capstone trait. I did specifically mention that my guess of 'most expensive' might not be right in my previous article:
Power Back (expected capstone trait: Athlete) - 13 players (5 ISFL / 7 DSFL / 1 free agents)
1 tier 5 (1 ISFL) - 1/1 with the trait
1 tier 3 (1 ISFL) - 0/1 with the trait
1 tier 2 (1 ISFL) - 0/1 with the trait
2 tier 1 (1 ISFL / 1 free agent) - 0/2 with the trait
8 tier 0 (1 ISFL / 7 DSFL) - 0/7 with the trait
Total: 1/13 players have the trait
Other traits:
* Raw talent: 1/13
* Role model: 1/13
For all Power Back RBs:
* 94.02% of TPE is spent on stats
* 4.77% is spent on traits
* 1.22% is banked
* There is 56 TPE that players have which cannot be spent due to being over caps
For just the ISFL Power Back RBs:
* 92.67% of TPE is spent on stats
* 6.76% is spent on traits
* 0.57% is banked
* There is 0 TPE that players have which cannot be spent due to being over caps
With only Richard Gilbert in the higher TPE ranges, the rest of the power backs are still working on stats to start. Gilbert has kept 3 traits in the first year of regression - maybe they've been useful?
Fullback (expected capstone trait: Athlete) - 9 players (8 ISFL / 1 DSFL)
2 tier 2 (2 ISFL) - 0/2 with the trait
3 tier 1 (3 ISFL) - 0/3 with the trait
4 tier 0 (3 ISFL / 1 DSFL) - 0/4 with the trait
Total: 0/9 players have the trait
Other traits:
* BlockingFB: 4/9
For all Fullback RBs:
* 93.11% of TPE is spent on stats
* 5.62% is spent on traits
* 1.27% is banked
* There is 0 TPE that players have which cannot be spent due to being over caps
For just the ISFL Fullback RBs:
* 93.03% of TPE is spent on stats
* 5.72% is spent on traits
* 1.26% is banked
* There is (still) 0 TPE that players have which cannot be spent due to being over caps
With half the ISFL fullback having the blocking fullback trait, I think that's a clear indication that it's the real capstone trait for the archetype. There are no super high earning players in the position, so there's no real way to see patterns on when other traits would get selected. It is interesting to see more than half of the ISFL teams have a fullback on their rosters despite the generally lower TPE totals (and especially given the later lack in blocking TEs) - are fullbacks that useful, or is it more a matter of TEs don't want to block?
WR
There are 60 WRs - 39 ISFL, 17 DSFL, and 3 FAs.
Speed Receiver (expected capstone trait: Deep Threat) - 30 players (19 ISFL / 8 DSFL / 3 Free Agent)
5 tier 6 (5 ISFL) - 5/5 with the trait
2 tier 5 (2 ISFL) - 2/2 with the trait
4 tier 4 (4 ISFL) - 4/4 with the trait
1 tier 3 (1 ISFL) - 0/1 with the trait
14 tier 2 (7 ISFL / 4 DSFL / 3 free agent) - 5/14 with the trait
1 tier 1 (1 DSFL) - 0/1 with the trait
3 tier 0 (3 DSFL) - 0/3 with the trait
Total: 16/30 players have the trait
Other traits:
* Athlete: 10/30
* Role model: 6/30
For all Speed Receiver WRs:
* 90.13% of TPE is spent on stats
* 8.25% is spent on traits
* 1.62% is banked
* There is 594 TPE that players have which cannot be spent due to being over caps
For just the ISFL Speed Receiver WRs:
* 89.52% of TPE is spent on stats
* 9.32% is spent on traits
* 1.16% is banked
* There is 578 TPE that players have which cannot be spent due to being over caps
As the solidly most popular trait, deep threat seems like the correct call for capstone. It is pretty cheap to get to if players focus on it but there's still a big range in where it's getting picked up - the lowest player with it is at 467 TPE while the highest without is at 904. Players do seem to be mostly prioritizing traits after hitting 71 endurance - maybe a sign that there's another tier effect for being in the 70s along the lines of the 79 speed bug?
Slot Receiver (expected capstone trait: Slot Receiver) - 17 players (13 ISFL / 4 DSFL)
1 tier 5 (1 ISFL) - 1/1 with the trait
3 tier 4 (3 ISFL) - 3/3 with the trait
3 tier 3 (3 ISFL) - 3/3 with the trait
8 tier 2 (6 ISFL / 2 DSFL) - 3/8 with the trait
1 tier 1 (1 DSFL) - 0/1 with the trait
1 tier 0 (1 DSFL) - 0/1 with the trait
Total: 10/17 players have the trait
Other traits:
* Athlete: 6/17
For all Slot Receiver WRs:
* 91.3% of TPE is spent on stats
* 7.19% is spent on traits
* 1.52% is banked
* There is 253 TPE that players have which cannot be spent due to being over caps
For just the ISFL Slot Receiver WRs:
* 91.65% of TPE is spent on stats
* 7.6% is spent on traits
* 0.74% is banked
* There is 0 TPE that players have which cannot be spent due to being over caps
Slot receiver seems to be another correct call with a solid lead over athlete for most popular trait. All the WRs have super wide tier 2 (min in the 100s to a max in the 800s) and that's where people seem to pick up slot receiver. Similar to speed receiver, the lowest TPE with the trait is 522 and the highest without is 828.
Possession Receiver (expected capstone trait: Slot Receiver) - 13 players (7 ISFL / 5 DSFL / 1 Free Agent)
1 tier 5 (1 ISFL) - 1/1 with the trait
7 tier 2 (6 ISFL / 1 free agent) - 2/7 with the trait
3 tier 1 (3 DSFL) - 0/3 with the trait
2 tier 0 (2 DSFL) - 0/2 with the trait
Total: 3/13 players have the trait
Other traits:
* Athlete: 1/13
For all Possession Receiver WRs:
* 94.57% of TPE is spent on stats
* 3.39% is spent on traits
* 2.03% is banked
* There is 0 TPE that players have which cannot be spent due to being over caps
For just the ISFL Possession Receiver WRs:
* 94.47% of TPE is spent on stats
* 3.94% is spent on traits
* 1.6% is banked
* There is (still) 0 TPE that players have which cannot be spent due to being over caps
With generally lower TPE players, trait adoption is lower for possession receivers than speed and slot. The slot receiver trait is still the most popular with players starting to pick it up in the tier 2 range. And, again similarly to the other WR archetypes, the lowest TPE with the trait is 564 while the highest without is 725.
TE
There are 30 TEs - 16 ISFL, 11 DSFL, and 3 FAs.
Vertical Threat (expected capstone trait: Receiving TE) - 11 players (8 ISFL / 3 DSFL)
4 tier 5 (4 ISFL) - 4/4 with the trait
1 tier 4 (1 ISFL) - 0/1 with the trait
2 tier 2 (2 ISFL) - 0/2 with the trait
1 tier 1 (1 ISFL) - 0/1 with the trait
3 tier 0 (3 DSFL) - 0/3 with the trait
Total: 4/11 players have the trait
Other traits:
* Athlete: 4/11
* Role model: 2/11
For all Vertical Threat TEs:
* 83.5% of TPE is spent on stats
* 14.11% is spent on traits
* 2.4% is banked
* There is 0 TPE that players have which cannot be spent due to being over caps
For just the ISFL Vertical Threat TEs:
* 83.65% of TPE is spent on stats
* 14.79% is spent on traits
* 1.56% is banked
* There is (still) 0 TPE that players have which cannot be spent due to being over caps
With equal popularity between receiving TE and athlete, I can't really make a call on which is higher priority for players without going to look for which one was selected first and reading through update pages takes way too long so I'm not going to do that right now. I'll at least call this a tentatively correct selection. There's an interesting split near the tier 4/5 border - Tree Gelbman with 786 TPE has no traits while Ragnar Krashwagen at 821 has receiving TE and athlete. Through the week 4 games, here are the stat lines:
Gelbman: 25 catches, 206 yards, 1 TD, 18 pancakes, 0 sacks allowed
Krashwagen: 19 catches, 216 yards, 2 TDs, 14 pancakes, 1 sack allowed
Krashwagen has a considerably higher YPC and an extra TD, but Gelbman has better blocking. Not sure if that's enough data to draw a real conclusion, but it's interesting.
Possession TE (expected capstone trait: Receiving TE) - 18 players (8 ISFL / 8 DSFL / 2 Free Agent)
3 tier 5 (3 ISFL) - 2/3 with the trait
1 tier 4 (1 ISFL) - 0/1 with the trait
3 tier 2 (3 ISFL) - 0/3 with the trait
6 tier 1 (5 DSFL / 1 free agent) - 0/6 with the trait
5 tier 0 (1 ISFL / 3 DSFL / 1 free agent) - 0/5 with the trait
Total: 2/18 players have the trait
Other traits:
* Athlete: 2/18
For all Possession TEs:
* 92.32% of TPE is spent on stats
* 5.14% is spent on traits
* 2.54% is banked
* There is 178 TPE that players have which cannot be spent due to being over caps
For just the ISFL Possession TEs:
* 92.36% of TPE is spent on stats
* 7.02% is spent on traits
* 0.61% is banked
* There is 0 TPE that players have which cannot be spent due to being over caps
With another equal split between receiving TE and athlete, it's still hard to pick the "real" capstone. Receiving TE does cost 150, so maybe the prospect of having to bank so much TPE with no immediate return is concerning?
Blocking TE (expected capstone trait: Blocking TE) - 1 players (1 Free Agent)
1 tier 2 (1 free agent) - 0/1 with the trait
Total: 0/1 players have the trait
And now we come to the least-adopted archetype in the league, poor inactive FA Cleg Manclaw. It looks like he was on Sarasota at the time of position switch since someone else from the team did an update for the new sim. He's had no updates since but has 100% of TPE spend on stats. Hope to see you back, Cleg!
The more interesting thing to me than Cleg's build is that the fullbacks are relatively popular while blocking TEs aren't. I didn't really look through the various player pages, but perhaps the RBs are also inactives who were converted for team convenience? There are definitely more RBs than TEs, so that could explain it. The other major reason I could see is that in testing blocking TEs weren't as useful as FBs and/or that they were too ineffective receiving if they built to block. Still, if there was a single archetype that I think the sim team should look into improving this is the clear winner given the barren wasteland of users in it.
OL
There are 56 OLinesman - 47 ISFL and 9 DSFL.
Athletic OL (expected capstone trait: Tenacious blocker) - 19 players (18 ISFL / 1 DSFL)
2 tier 5 (2 ISFL) - 2/2 with the trait
1 tier 4 (1 ISFL) - 1/1 with the trait
5 tier 2 (5 ISFL) - 1/5 with the trait
5 tier 1 (5 ISFL) - 0/5 with the trait
6 tier 0 (5 ISFL / 1 DSFL) - 0/6 with the trait
Total: 4/19 players have the trait
Other traits:
* Role model: 1/19
For all Athletic OLine:
* 92.08% of TPE is spent on stats
* 5.17% is spent on traits
* 2.75% is banked
* There is 0 TPE that players have which cannot be spent due to being over caps
For just the ISFL Athletic OLine (sure it's basically the same with only 1 DSFL player, but there's a format OK):
* 92.01% of TPE is spent on stats
* 5.22% is spent on traits
* 2.77% is banked
* There is (still) 0 TPE that players have which cannot be spent due to being over caps
Tenacious blocker looks like another correct capstone call. However, it's interesting to see that the players without it generally have little banked. The lowest TPE with the trait is at 852 TPE and the next highest player is at 820 with 0 banked, meaning the earliest the trait could be picked up at is 970 total TPE. Not sure if that's a sign that those players don't consider it more valuable or if there are other factors in play. The other interesting (but not trait related) observation is that there is only one DSFL player with this archetype. Maybe DSFL OL are encourage to go into other archetypes? Athletic I believe is the more pass protection archetype and I remember the DSFL as being less pass-heavy than the ISFL.
Balanced OL (expected capstone trait: Tenacious blocker) - 20 players (16 ISFL / 4 DSFL)
2 tier 5 (2 ISFL) - 1/2 with the trait
1 tier 2 (1 ISFL) - 0/1 with the trait
2 tier 1 (2 ISFL) - 0/2 with the trait
15 tier 0 (11 ISFL / 4 DSFL) - 0/15 with the trait
Total: 1/20 players have the trait
Other traits:
* Role model: 2/20
For all Balanced OLine:
* 94.5% of TPE is spent on stats
* 2.79% is spent on traits
* 2.7% is banked
* There is 1 TPE that players have which cannot be spent due to being over caps
For just the ISFL Balanced OLine:
* 94.14% of TPE is spent on stats
* 3% is spent on traits
* 2.86% is banked
* There is 0 TPE that players have which cannot be spent due to being over caps
Role model has the single selection lead over tenacious blocker, but Adam Mellott has 135 banked TPE that seems clearly earmarked for that in the next week or two. In some ways, the second role model selection is an outlier as it is taken by 507 TPE Manhattan Project. I suppose if you're engineering nuclear devices you would want to be seen as a role model, so I approve.
Mauler OL (expected capstone trait: Tenacious blocker) - 17 players (13 ISFL / 4 DSFL)
1 tier 3 (1 ISFL) - 1/1 with the trait
4 tier 2 (4 ISFL) - 1/4 with the trait
12 tier 0 (8 ISFL / 4 DSFL) - 0/12 with the trait
Total: 2/17 players have the trait
Other traits:
* Role model: 1/17
For all Balanced OLine:
* 92.63% of TPE is spent on stats
* 4.13% is spent on traits
* 3.24% is banked
* There is 0 TPE that players have which cannot be spent due to being over caps
For just the ISFL Balanced OLine:
* 92.07% of TPE is spent on stats
* 4.48% is spent on traits
* 3.45% is banked
* There is (still) 0 TPE that players have which cannot be spent due to being over caps
Tenacious blocker is back in the lead over role model, and I think the high percentage of banked TPE reflects that 3 more players are saving up for it given that there are 3 players with 80, 74, and 55 TPE banked.
DT
There are 34 DTs - 24 ISFL and 10 DSFL.
Nose Tackle (expected capstone trait: Bull Rusher) - 8 players (5 ISFL / 3 DSFL)
1 tier 6 (1 ISFL) - 1/1 with the trait
3 tier 5 (3 ISFL) - 3/3 with the trait
1 tier 2 (1 ISFL) - 1/1 with the trait
3 tier 0 (3 DSFL) - 0/3 with the trait
Total: 5/8 players have the trait
Other traits:
* Speed rusher: 4/8
* Competitor: 3/8
* Perceptive: 2/8
* Role model: 2/8
For all Nose Tackle DTs:
* 78.47% of TPE is spent on stats
* 19.26% is spent on traits
* 2.27% is banked
* There is 15 TPE that players have which cannot be spent due to being over caps
For just the ISFL Nose Tackle DTs:
* 76.48% of TPE is spent on stats
* 21.03% is spent on traits
* 2.48% is banked
* There is (still) 15 TPE that players have which cannot be spent due to being over caps
With a bunch of high TPE players, nose tackles are heavily invested into traits. Bull rushers is the slim favorite over speed rusher, but the player that doesn't have both is almost 400 TPE behind the next-lowest player.
All-purpose (expected capstone trait: Bull Rusher) - 9 players (6 ISFL / 3 DSFL)
2 tier 5 (2 ISFL) - 2/2 with the trait
3 tier 4 (3 ISFL) - 2/3 with the trait
2 tier 2 (1 ISFL / 1 DSFL) - 0/2 with the trait
1 tier 1 (1 DSFL) - 0/1 with the trait
1 tier 0 (1 DSFL) - 0/1 with the trait
Total: 4/9 players have the trait
Other traits:
* Speed rusher: 4/9
* Perceptive: 2/9
* Competitor: 1/9
* Role model: 1/9
For all All-purpose DTs:
* 84.8% of TPE is spent on stats
* 14.88% is spent on traits
* 0.32% is banked
* There is 263 TPE that players have which cannot be spent due to being over caps
For just the ISFL All-purpose DTs:
* 82.88% of TPE is spent on stats
* 16.79% is spent on traits
* 0.34% is banked
* There is 0 TPE that players have which cannot be spent due to being over caps
A tie between bull rusher and speed rusher makes it hard to pick which one is the "real" capstone, but given that the archetype is literally "all-around" it makes sense to see different players focusing on different things given interest or team needs (it's not obvious from the table, but there are 3 players with both bull/speed, 1 with just bull, and 1 with just speed).
Interior Rusher (expected capstone trait: Speed Rusher) - 17 players (13 ISFL / 4 DSFL)
4 tier 5 (4 ISFL) - 4/4 with the trait
3 tier 4 (3 ISFL) - 2/3 with the trait
1 tier 3 (1 ISFL) - 0/1 with the trait
8 tier 2 (5 ISFL / 3 DSFL) - 2/8 with the trait
1 tier 1 (1 DSFL) - 0/1 with the trait
Total: 8/17 players have the trait
Other traits:
* Bull rusher: 4/17
* Perceptive: 2/17
* Competitor: 1/17
* Role model: 1/17
For all Interior Rusher DTs:
* 86.36% of TPE is spent on stats
* 11.34% is spent on traits
* 2.31% is banked
* There is 126 TPE that players have which cannot be spent due to being over caps
For just the ISFL Interior Rusher DTs:
* 85.13% of TPE is spent on stats
* 12.57% is spent on traits
* 2.3% is banked
* There is 0 TPE that players have which cannot be spent due to being over caps
Speed rusher is in the clear lead over bull rusher, so I apparently picked that part correctly. There is one player with just bull rusher, so again it's something that people are apparently customizing. More interestingly, though, is that there are two sub-300 TPE players who picked up speed rusher (which for reference is the tier 2 category - enough TPE to purchase the capstone trait and its prereqs). I calculated the minimum TPE required to do that as 215 in my previous article, so it does look like those players went directly for it as a priority.
DE
There are 43 DEs - 29 ISFL, 13 DSFL, and 1 FA.
Run Stuffer (expected capstone trait: Bull Rusher) - 3 players (2 ISFL / 1 DSFL)
1 tier 3 (1 ISFL) - 1/1 with the trait
1 tier 2 (1 ISFL) - 1/1 with the trait
1 tier 0 (1 DSFL) - 0/1 with the trait
Total: 2/3 players have the trait
No other traits
For all Run Stuffer DEs:
* 79.21% of TPE is spent on stats
* 13.54% is spent on traits
* 7.24% is banked
* There is 0 TPE that players have which cannot be spent due to being over caps
For just the ISFL Run Stuffer DEs:
* 80.24% of TPE is spent on stats
* 14.02% is spent on traits
* 5.75% is banked
* There is (still) 0 TPE that players have which cannot be spent due to being over caps
Run stuffer has a low population, but both ISFL players are on the Hawks. Have they identified some simulation strategy that works really well? The Hawks are collectively 7th in the league in rushing yards and they do have a decent-looking stat line through 4 games:
Etrigan T. Slayer / Maui Waialiki combined: 19 tackles / 4TFL / 3 FF 1 FR / 7 sacks
That's not enough to get me to go switch my build immediately, but if they can keep up that pace for the rest of the season it would be pretty interesting.
Power Rusher (expected capstone trait: Bull Rusher) - 18 players (13 ISFL / 4 DSFL / 1 Free Agent)
2 tier 6 (2 ISFL) - 2/2 with the trait
4 tier 5 (4 ISFL) - 4/4 with the trait
4 tier 4 (4 ISFL) - 3/4 with the trait
2 tier 2 (2 ISFL) - 0/2 with the trait
2 tier 1 (1 ISFL / 1 free agent) - 0/2 with the trait
4 tier 0 (4 DSFL) - 0/4 with the trait
Total: 9/18 players have the trait
Other traits:
* Competitor: 6/18
* Perceptive: 5/18
* Role model: 3/18
For all Power Rusher DEs:
* 85.11% of TPE is spent on stats
* 13.28% is spent on traits
* 1.61% is banked
* There is 117 TPE that players have which cannot be spent due to being over caps
For just the ISFL Power Rusher DEs:
* 83.98% of TPE is spent on stats
* 14.51% is spent on traits
* 1.5% is banked
* There is 80 TPE that players have which cannot be spent due to being over caps
Bull rusher has a solid lead in popularity, but the overall trait adoption is high. Most of that looks to be due to having 5 players over 1000 TPE (plus Tex Wrecks at 997), allowing a few more purchases overall. It looks like Mike Karpaasi is saving up for the trait as well, with 86 banked.
Speed Rusher (expected capstone trait: Speed Rusher) - 22 players (14 ISFL / 8 DSFL)
4 tier 5 (4 ISFL) - 4/4 with the trait
3 tier 4 (3 ISFL) - 3/3 with the trait
6 tier 2 (6 ISFL) - 1/6 with the trait
1 tier 1 (1 ISFL) - 0/1 with the trait
8 tier 0 (8 DSFL) - 0/8 with the trait
Total: 8/22 players have the trait
Other traits:
* Perceptive: 7/18
* Competitor: 4/18
* Role model: 1/18
For all Speed Rusher DEs:
* 87.23% of TPE is spent on stats
* 11.65% is spent on traits
* 1.12% is banked
* There is 34 TPE that players have which cannot be spent due to being over caps
For just the ISFL Speed Rusher DEs:
* 86.18% of TPE is spent on stats
* 12.83% is spent on traits
* 0.98% is banked
* There is 0 TPE that players have which cannot be spent due to being over caps
Speed rusher is narrowly in the lead for traits, but perceptive has a strong second-place in with just one fewer purchase (and 2 players with just perceptive). The description for perceptive says "More likely to go after the ball carrier on run plays" so I could see that being a way to help deal with draws (does the sim even have those?) or other pass-rush fakeouts?
LB
There are 65 LBs - 44 ISFL, 18 DSFL, and 3 FAs.
Pass Rusher (expected capstone trait: Athlete) - 40 players (28 ISFL / 10 DSFL / 2 Free Agents)
3 tier 6 (3 ISFL) - 3/3 with the trait
12 tier 5 (12 ISFL) - 10/12 with the trait
4 tier 4 (4 ISFL) - 2/4 with the trait
2 tier 3 (2 ISFL) - 0/2 with the trait
7 tier 2 (6 ISFL / 1 DSFL) - 0/7 with the trait
3 tier 1 (1 ISFL / 1 DSFL / 1 free agent) - 0/3 with the trait
9 tier 0 (8 DSFL / 1 free agent) - 0/9 with the trait
Total: 15/40 players have the trait
Other traits:
* Speed rusher: 17/40
* Competitor: 14/40
* Role model: 5/40
For all Pass Rusher LBs:
* 85.68% of TPE is spent on stats
* 11.93% is spent on traits
* 2.39% is banked
* There is 816 TPE that players have which cannot be spent due to being over caps
For just the ISFL Pass Rusher LBs:
* 85.22% of TPE is spent on stats
* 12.95% is spent on traits
* 1.83% is banked
* There is 403 TPE that players have which cannot be spent due to being over caps
Similar to the case with running backs, athlete was the most expensive trait but I was actually expecting speed rusher to be more popular and that is what happened. It's actually a very narrow lead with only 2 more players taking it, but I'm guessing some of that is to the completely stacked archetype here with 15 players in tier 5 or 6. Despite that, the percentage spent on TPE is lower than some of the DT archetypes - I think it's probably just because the total trait cost is higher at 300 for DT and 250 for LB.
Versatile (expected capstone trait: Athlete) - 11 players (7 ISFL / 3 DSFL / 1 Free Agent)
1 tier 5 (1 ISFL) - 1/1 with the trait
1 tier 4 (1 ISFL) - 1/1 with the trait
1 tier 3 (1 ISFL) - 0/1 with the trait
3 tier 2 (3 ISFL) - 0/3 with the trait
1 tier 1 (1 ISFL) - 0/1 with the trait
4 tier 0 (3 DSFL / 1 free agent) - 0/4 with the trait
Total: 2/11 players have the trait
Other traits:
* Competitor: 2/11
* Perceptive: 2/11
* Speed rusher: 1/11
For all Versatile LBs:
* 92.33% of TPE is spent on stats
* 6.65% is spent on traits
* 1.01% is banked
* There is 96 TPE that players have which cannot be spent due to being over caps
For just the ISFL Versatile LBs:
* 91.54% of TPE is spent on stats
* 7.78% is spent on traits
* 0.68% is banked
* There is 0 TPE that players have which cannot be spent due to being over caps
With presumably less focus on pass rushing, speed rusher is lower for versatile. Seeing competitor and perceptive above it (and tied with athlete) is interesting to me. The lower average TPE of the position vs. the pass rushers is also very clearly showing in the lower percentage of TPE spent on traits.
Coverage (expected capstone trait: Athlete) - 14 players (9 ISFL / 5 DSFL)
7 tier 5 (7 ISFL) - 3/7 with the trait
1 tier 3 (1 ISFL) - 0/1 with the trait
1 tier 2 (1 ISFL) - 0/1 with the trait
5 tier 0 (5 DSFL) - 0/5 with the trait
Total: 3/14 players have the trait
Other traits:
* Perceptive: 7/14
* Competitor: 4/14
For all Coverage LBs:
* 90.36% of TPE is spent on stats
* 8.94% is spent on traits
* 0.7% is banked
* There is 0 TPE that players have which cannot be spent due to being over caps
For just the ISFL Coverage LBs:
* 89.6% of TPE is spent on stats
* 9.58% is spent on traits
* 0.81% is banked
* There is (still) 0 TPE that players have which cannot be spent due to being over caps
Perceptive is the huge winner here, and even competitor gets selected more often. The (other) text on perceptive is "More likely to intercept passes" which sounds pretty relevant for coverage, and competitor's "More likely to defend passes" sounds again directly related to what you're trying to do with coverage. So yeah, I think athlete clearly makes sense to lose out for the optimal capstone trait.
CB
There are 58 CBs - 40 ISFL, 16 DSFL, and 3 FAs.
Cover Corner (expected capstone trait: Shut down corner) - 32 players (21 ISFL / 10 DSFL / 1 Free Agent)
10 tier 5 (10 ISFL) - 9/10 with the trait
1 tier 4 (1 ISFL) - 1/1 with the trait
3 tier 3 (3 ISFL) - 1/3 with the trait
11 tier 2 (7 ISFL / 3 DSFL / 1 free agent) - 3/11 with the trait
1 tier 1 (1 DSFL) - 0/1 with the trait
6 tier 0 (6 DSFL) - 0/6 with the trait
Total: 14/32 players have the trait
Other traits:
* Perceptive: 10/32
* Athlete: 4/32
* Competitor: 3/32
* Role model: 1/32
For all Cover CBs:
* 90.59% of TPE is spent on stats
* 8.25% is spent on traits
* 1.16% is banked
* There is 323 TPE that players have which cannot be spent due to being over caps
For just the ISFL Cover CBs:
* 89.53% of TPE is spent on stats
* 9.37% is spent on traits
* 1.11% is banked
* There is 0 TPE that players have which cannot be spent due to being over caps
Shut down corner has a reasonably expected lead here, but the presumptive value of perceptive in helping to intercept passes gets it into a strong second place. I'm surprised to see that competitor is lower here given how popular it is for the coverage LBs, but it could be that CBs are tackling less often or that the requirements are further from the baseline for the archetype?
Physical Corner (expected capstone trait: Press corner) - 20 players (15 ISFL / 5 DSFL / 1 Free Agent)
3 tier 6 (3 ISFL) - 3/3 with the trait
1 tier 5 (1 ISFL) - 1/1 with the trait
6 tier 4 (6 ISFL) - 3/6 with the trait
8 tier 2 (5 ISFL / 2 DSFL / 1 free agent) - 1/8 with the trait
2 tier 1 (2 DSFL) - 0/2 with the trait
Total: 8/20 players have the trait
Other traits:
* Perceptive: 9/20
* Competitor: 8/20
* Athlete: 6/20
* Role model: 3/20
For all Physical CBs:
* 86.93% of TPE is spent on stats
* 11.36% is spent on traits
* 1.71% is banked
* There is 263 TPE that players have which cannot be spent due to being over caps
For just the ISFL Physical CBs:
* 85.92% of TPE is spent on stats
* 12.33% is spent on traits
* 1.75% is banked
* There is 87 TPE that players have which cannot be spent due to being over caps
Perceptive narrowly edges press corner while competitor ties it for most popular trait picks. It's really cheap to get press corner, so I'm surprised to see it's not more popular than it is but I guess the interception/pass defense bonuses from the other traits are good. Or maybe teams aren't actually running protections where press corner helps as much?
Slot Corner (expected capstone trait: Slot corner) - 6 players (4 ISFL / 1 DSFL / 1 Free Agent)
1 tier 5 (1 ISFL) - 0/1 with the trait
2 tier 4 (2 ISFL) - 1/2 with the trait
1 tier 2 (1 ISFL) - 0/1 with the trait
2 tier 0 (1 DSFL / 1 free agent) - 0/2 with the trait
Total: 1/6 players have the trait
Other traits:
* Competitor: 2/6
* Perceptive: 1/6
* Role model: 1/6
For all Slot CBs:
* 92.89% of TPE is spent on stats
* 6.74% is spent on traits
* 0.38% is banked
* There is 0 TPE that players have which cannot be spent due to being over caps
For just the ISFL Slot CBs:
* 92.63% of TPE is spent on stats
* 7.17% is spent on traits
* 0.2% is banked
* There is (still) 0 TPE that players have which cannot be spent due to being over caps
There's only 4 ISFL players, so competitor being ahead by 1 might or might not be significant. I could see that in theory slot CBs are more often playing closer to the line and therefore getting involved in more running plays and tackling, but I haven't really looked to see if the numbers support that guess or not.
S
There are 43 Safeties - 31 ISFL, 11 DSFL, and 1 FA.
Center Fielder (expected capstone trait: Slot corner) - 16 players (12 ISFL / 3 DSFL / 1 Free Agent)
1 tier 6 (1 ISFL) - 1/1 with the trait
2 tier 5 (2 ISFL) - 2/2 with the trait
3 tier 4 (3 ISFL) - 3/3 with the trait
7 tier 2 (6 ISFL / 1 free agent) - 3/7 with the trait
1 tier 1 (1 DSFL) - 0/1 with the trait
2 tier 0 (2 DSFL) - 0/2 with the trait
Total: 9/16 players have the trait
Other traits:
* Athlete: 6/16
* Competitor: 4/16
* Role model: 1/16
For all Center Fielder Safeties:
* 90.63% of TPE is spent on stats
* 8.2% is spent on traits
* 1.17% is banked
* There is 191 TPE that players have which cannot be spent due to being over caps
For just the ISFL Center Fielder Safeties:
* 89.84% of TPE is spent on stats
* 8.88% is spent on traits
* 1.27% is banked
* There is 57 TPE that players have which cannot be spent due to being over caps
Center fielder is the clear top pick with the top 9 players by TPE all having it and then a mix of athlete and competitor sprinkled around. That being said, the cutoff line is not a huge gap of TPE, so I'm not sure from this casual inspection if there's something that leads some players to have gotten it and not the others.
Ball Hawk (expected capstone trait: Perceptive) - 17 players (10 ISFL / 7 DSFL)
3 tier 5 (3 ISFL) - 3/3 with the trait
2 tier 4 (2 ISFL) - 2/2 with the trait
8 tier 2 (5 ISFL / 3 DSFL) - 0/8 with the trait
4 tier 0 (4 DSFL) - 0/4 with the trait
Total: 5/17 players have the trait
Other traits:
* Competitor: 4/17
* Role model: 3/17
* Athlete: 1/17
For all Ball Hawk Safeties:
* 91.62% of TPE is spent on stats
* 6.39% is spent on traits
* 1.99% is banked
* There is 594 TPE that players have which cannot be spent due to being over caps
For just the ISFL Ball Hawk Safeties:
* 90.86% of TPE is spent on stats
* 7.24% is spent on traits
* 1.89% is banked
* There is 0 TPE that players have which cannot be spent due to being over caps
I seem to have very narrowly guessed right by picking perceptive, but competitor is right behind it. Seeing role model next is interesting - I wonder if it's because safety penalties tend to be related to more yards/bigger plays/automatic first downs, and so reducing them helps more? Not sure, really, if that's why or if there's something else.
Enforcer (expected capstone trait: Box safety) - 10 players (9 ISFL / 1 DSFL)
2 tier 4 (2 ISFL) - 1/2 with the trait
1 tier 3 (1 ISFL) - 1/1 with the trait
6 tier 2 (6 ISFL) - 2/6 with the trait
1 tier 0 (1 DSFL) - 0/1 with the trait
Total: 4/10 players have the trait
Other traits:
* Athlete: 2/10
* Competitor: 1/10
For all Enforcer Safeties:
* 93.29% of TPE is spent on stats
* 5.52% is spent on traits
* 1.18% is banked
* There is 0 TPE that players have which cannot be spent due to being over caps
For just the ISFL Enforcer Safeties:
* 93.48% of TPE is spent on stats
* 5.61% is spent on traits
* 0.91% is banked
* There is (still) 0 TPE that players have which cannot be spent due to being over caps
Enforcers are heavy on the box safety trait, with athlete and competitor trailing. Nothing especially surprises me about that...unless you look at the ordering on who has the traits. The second and fourth highest TPE players have no traits, while the first, third, and fifth/sixth do. Interesting pattern, not sure if there's a tested reason for that or not.
K/P
There are 25 kickers - 15 ISFL, 8 DSFL, and 2 FAs.
Accurate (expected capstone trait: Steel toe boots) - 20 players (12 ISFL / 6 DSFL / 2 Free Agent)
1 tier 5 (1 ISFL) - 1/1 with the trait
2 tier 4 (2 ISFL) - 1/2 with the trait
3 tier 1 (3 ISFL) - 0/3 with the trait
14 tier 0 (6 ISFL / 6 DSFL / 1 free agent) - 0/14 with the trait
Total: 2/20 players have the trait
No other traits
For all Accurate Kickers:
* 88.42% of TPE is spent on stats
* 3.78% is spent on traits
* 7.8% is banked
* There is 114 TPE that players have which cannot be spent due to being over caps
For just the ISFL Accurate Kickers
* 85.66% of TPE is spent on stats
* 4.79% is spent on traits
* 9.54% is banked
* There is 0 TPE that players have which cannot be spent due to being over caps
Unsurprisingly, given that you can only get 2 attributes and the second requires the first, the first attribute is the most popular. Really the only surprising thing is seeing the huge amount of banked TPE that the kickers have. Jake Fencik in particular has enough to purchase steel toe but isn't yet for...some reason? The other interesting thing is seeing that ISFL rosteredness is less stratified by TPE than most other positions. I'm not sure if that's because higher earning on kickers doesn't pay off and so teams focus on active players or if there's a deeper reason.
Power (expected capstone trait: Straight shooter) - 5 players (3 ISFL / 2 DSFL)
1 tier 5 (1 ISFL) - 1/1 with the trait
1 tier 4 (1 ISFL) - 1/1 with the trait
3 tier 0 (1 ISFL / 2 DSFL) - 0/3 with the trait
Total: 2/5 players have the trait
Other traits:
* Laser Sights: 1/5
For all Power Kickers:
* 75.58% of TPE is spent on stats
* 21.53% is spent on traits
* 2.89% is banked
* There is 0 TPE that players have which cannot be spent due to being over caps
For just the ISFL Power Kickers
* 74.48% of TPE is spent on stats
* 22.5% is spent on traits
* 3.02% is banked
* There is (still) 0 TPE that players have which cannot be spent due to being over caps
First as an aside, I have to say that having "power" for the archetype name vs. "accurate" is annoying - it should be power/accuracy or it should be powerful/accurate. Mixing those up is a crime against consistency.
Beyond that, the power archetype shares the "no decisions except when" trait layout as accurate and so it's not surprising that straight shooter is the most common. I do wonder if the requirements persist in regression, though - could Matthew McDairmid cash in straight shooter but keep laser sights next year? The answer probably doesn't matter.
Non-positional breakdowns
Having examined each position in detail, I'm now going to look at some details by league and player tier.
Tier 6: 19 players (19 ISFL)
* 19/19 players have their archetype's capstone trait
* 82.63% of TPE is spent on stats
* 16.57% is spent on traits
* 0.8% is banked
* There is 1290 TPE that players have which cannot be spent due to being over caps
Unsurprisingly, players who have enough TPE to get all the stats and all the traits have their capstone trait. I believe some of the banked TPE is from WRs who didn't max their blocking stats - maybe the reduces the rate they run routes or something? No real surprises though.
Tier 5: 81 players (81 ISFL)
* 70/81 players have their archetype's capstone trait
* 83.3% of TPE is spent on stats
* 15.2% is spent on traits
* 1.5% is banked
* There is 0 TPE that players have which cannot be spent due to being over caps
With a lot more total players, the spent TPE breakdown looks pretty similar to tier 6 despite the ~13.6% of players who haven't picked up the capstone trait.
Tier 4: 53 players (53 ISFL)
* 39/53 players have their archetype's capstone trait
* 87.5% of TPE is spent on stats
* 10.65% is spent on traits
* 1.85% is banked
* There is 0 TPE that players have which cannot be spent due to being over caps
With less total TPE, the percent of players not yet getting their capstone trait (~26.4%) is about double tier 5. The more telling data is that the percent of TPE spent on traits is down by a third - clearly more focus on stats instead.
Tier 3: 19 players (19 ISFL)
* 8/19 players have their archetype's capstone trait
* 91.39% of TPE is spent on stats
* 7.38% is spent on traits
* 1.23% is banked
* There is 97 TPE that players have which cannot be spent due to being over caps
The trend of fewer players with the capstone and less TPE on traits continues in tier 3 and I'd expect that to pick up more as we go on.
Tier 2: 137 players (105 ISFL / 24 DSFL / 8 Free Agent)
* 29/137 players have their archetype's capstone trait
* 94.1% of TPE is spent on stats
* 3.78% is spent on traits
* 2.12% is banked
* There is 2572 TPE that players have which cannot be spent due to being over caps
This is the first tier to contain any DSFL players, which I assume is the main source of the unspendable TPE. TPE spent on stats does increase further as expected, though I'll admit the percent of players with their capstone trait is higher than I was expecting at ~21.2%
Tier 1: 44 players (22 ISFL / 18 DSFL / 4 Free Agent)
* 0/44 players have their archetype's capstone trait
* 95.37% of TPE is spent on stats
* 0.95% is spent on traits
* 3.68% is banked
* There is 452 TPE that players have which cannot be spent due to being over caps
Tier one players have (by definition) enough TPE that they could have purchased their archetype's capstone trait and its prerequisites. I'm not super surprised that it hasn't been done, but I am somewhat surprised to see that there are other traits purchased.
Tier 0: 141 players (35 ISFL / 98 DSFL / 8 Free Agent)
* 0/141 players have their archetype's capstone trait
* 96.44% of TPE is spent on stats
* 0.18% is spent on traits
* 3.38% is banked
* There is 761 TPE that players have which cannot be spent due to being over caps
At tier 0 we unsurprisingly see most of the DSFL players. Most archetypes require more TPE than the DSFL cap to purchase the capstone trait, so I'm not surprised to see that none of the tier zero players have purchased it. As with tier 1, though, I'm surprised that some players have other traits purchased instead.
Capstone summary
So after going through each position, I think it's clear that the "most expensive will be most popular" guess I had was not perfectly right, but I think it worked surprisingly well as a heuristic with minimal room for judgement. If this project hadn't taken approximately forever to do, I'd say it would be interesting to check the trait distribution every season and monitoring to see if different traits get more or less popular over time.
Other conclusions
So, did I learn anything from this or is there anything I would recommend that the sim balancing team look at?
* Most positions have pretty good archetype diversity. The biggest (negative) standout to me is the blocking TE which has a lone inactive free agent in its ranks. ISFL QB starters are also solidly concentrated in two of the five archetypes, but I don't think that's nearly as concerning (though it might be worth keeping an eye on the balance in the future)
* The TPE tracker is an amazing tool but occasionally has some data quality issues due to player page formatting or errors in updating/keeping the update thread and all values on the player page correct. If anyone else is thinking on using it as a primary source, be aware that it is not 100% correct. It's (unsurprisingly) worst at the traits, since they're a bunch of string information strewn about. If the relevant parties want the tracker to be more useful, maybe there's some way to work on the trait handling?
Introduction
As part of the last sim migration, there was a large revamp of all positions/archetypes. One of the biggest changes was the introduction of traits, an archetype-specific customization option slightly different than stats. I explored the costs of getting the traits before the migration was done. Now that it's been a couple seasons, I'm going to look at what adoption of the traits has looked like.
As one side note: I had an implicit hypothesis in that article that each archetype had one central trait that people were intended to be building towards. From what I've seen, that's not quite what has happened. It would be interesting to see if I was at least correct in identifying which trait ended up getting purchased first most often correctly, but my primary means of gathering data (the TPE tracker) doesn't seem to do a great job of trait tracking and so I'm not going to check that out here.
A couple data cleanliness notes: Data was gathered from the TPE tracker on 5/29 mostly before update. I ignored any player in the tracker with an archetype from before the migration and then additionally any with -999 competitiveness in the tracker (which I think is the case for players where they were in an archetype which didn't have a name change but who did not do the migration to the new sim), though it's possible I discarded some valid players which have player pages that the TPE tracker is failing to parse or something. A number of players have pending regressions (usually denoted by "THIS PLAYER MUST BE REGRESSED TO X TPE BEFORE BEING USED IN A LINEUP" on their player page); I generally removed those from analysis because the math for their TPE showed more spent than their current values. There were also a few other players which seemed to have some discrepancies (eg more TPE in stats than the tracker was reporting), which seemed to be for collection of unrelated issues (player/update page disagreement, inactives with a negative bank due to points getting rescinded, etc.) and I generally rounded any negative banks to zero for analysis. I inspected some players (especially those with banks in excess of the cost of a trait) to see if the tracker was failing the pull the data correctly and many of those were late enough that they were including 5/29 update information hopefully that introduces small magnitude of errors, but it does decrease the consistency of the data.
For exploring the positions, I will place the players in the tiers I defined in my previous article. For reference, those were
1. To the point where the position's most expensive trait could be purchased
2. 1 but with the cost of the trait added
3. 2 and then maxing all stats considered high priority in the previous stat priority recommendations. Since competitiveness is new, I'm going to assume its importance is the same as endurance as a heuristic.
4. 3 plus any other stats required to get all remaining traits
5. 4 plus those traits
6. All remaining stats to max
I'll be counting those players as being in the tier once they've hit the minimum of that but not the minimum of the next one. So, as 200 TPE Gunslinger QB would be tier 1 (more than 160 TPE, less than 210) while a 100 TPE player would be tier zero.
One other note - I consider only TPE that could be spent for looking at percentages. So, if a player has 1500 TPE but the position only uses 1300 at max, I ignore the 200 over that cap for the percentages (though I do sum up the amount over the cap). For players in the DSFL, I counted TPE over the 250 DSFL cap similarly since it also can't be spent right now. That excess TPE is summed in the various breakdowns for reference but it is not used in the spent TPE percentages (specifically, it's not counted as banked TPE in the percentage calculation).
QB
After the data sanitization, there are 25 QBs. 15 of those are on ISFL teams, 10 are on DSFL teams, and none are free agents.
Gunslinger (expected capstone trait: Gunslinger) - 5 players (2 ISFL / 3 DSFL)
2 tier 3 (2 ISFL) - 1/2 with the trait
3 tier 2 (3 DSFL) - 0/3 with the trait
Total: 1/5 players have the trait
No other purchased traits
For all Gunslinger QBs:
* 97.84% of TPE is spent on stats
* 2% is spent on traits
* 0.16% is banked
* There is 244 TPE that players have which cannot be spent due to being over caps
For just the ISFL Gunslinger QBs:
* 96.91% of TPE is spent on stats
* 2.86% is spent on traits
* 0.23% is banked
* There is 0 TPE that players have which cannot be spent due to being over caps
All 3 DSFL gunslingers are over the DSFL maximum for TPE, which I think is the main reason to see high banked percentage for all gunslingers. The two ISFL players are fairly close in total TPE (both tier 3 and in the 800-900 range) so seeing one with the trait and one without it is interesting.
Pocket Passer (expected capstone trait: Game manager) - 8 players (6 ISFL / 2 DSFL)
2 tier 6 (2 ISFL) - 2/2 with the trait
1 tier 5 (1 ISFL) - 1/1 with the trait
1 tier 4 (1 ISFL) - 1/1 with the trait
3 tier 2 (2 ISFL 1 DSFL) - 2/3 with the trait
1 tier 1 (1 DSFL) - 0/1 with the trait
Total: 6/8 players have the trait
Other traits:
* Athlete: 3/8
* Role model: 2/8
For all Pocket Passer QBs:
* 86.07% of TPE is spent on stats
* 13.06% is spent on traits
* 0.88% is banked
* There is 341 TPE that players have which cannot be spent due to being over caps
For just the ISFL Gunslinger QBs:
* 84.1% of TPE is spent on stats
* 14.81% is spent on traits
* 1.09% is banked
* There is 51 TPE that players have which cannot be spent due to being over caps
With pocket passers making up something like 40% of ISFL starters, it's interesting to see all of them with the game manager trait. The tier 5 and 6 players have more traits too, but all the lower ones have it which suggests it's fairly important.
Field General (expected capstone trait: Game manager) - 7 players (6 ISFL / 1 DSFL)
2 tier 6 (2 ISFL) - 2/2 with the trait
3 tier 5 (3 ISFL) - 3/3 with the trait
1 tier 4 (1 ISFL) - 0/1 with the trait
1 tier 0 (1 DSFL) - 0/1 with the trait
Total: 5/7 players have the trait
Other traits:
* Athlete: 3/7
* Role model: 3/7
For all Field General QBs:
* 88.88% of TPE is spent on stats
* 10.81% is spent on traits
* 0.31% is banked
* There is 19 TPE that players have which cannot be spent due to being over caps
For just the ISFL Field General QBs:
* 84.64% of TPE is spent on stats
* 11.05% is spent on traits
* 0.3% is banked
* There is (still) 19 TPE that players have which cannot be spent due to being over caps
The other major ISFL starter achetype also is deeply bought into the capstone trait. Sabercats QB Monty Jack is a noteable exception - despite being over 1000 TPE, he doesn't have it (or any others). Has he seen stats be more useful in testing? His 1045 TPE worth of stats is narrowly ahead of Suleiman Ramza's 1010, but those are both close to the position's cap of 1090 so maybe the gap doesn't matter much.
Scrambler (expected capstone trait: Dual threat) - 2 players (0 ISFL / 2 DSFL)
2 tier 0 (2 DSFL) - 0/2 with the trait
Total: 0/2 players have the trait
No other traits
For all Scrambler QBs:
* 100% of TPE is spent on stats
* 0% is spent on traits
* 0% is banked
* There is 63 TPE that players have which cannot be spent due to being over caps
With only DSFL QBs and the minimum TPE required to max core stats for scramblers being over the DSFL cap, it makes sense that no players have it purchased. It'll be interesting to see when Luchadors QB IsHe... ReallyInvisible gets called up and then how high of a priority dual threat ends up being.
Mobile (expected capstone trait: Dual threat) - 3 players (0 ISFL / 3 DSFL)
1 tier 2 (1 DSFL) - 0/1 with the trait
2 tier 0 (2 DSFL) - 0/2 with the trait
Total: 0/3 players have the trait
No other traits
For all Mobile QBs:
* 99.83% of TPE is spent on stats
* 0% is spent on traits
* 0.17% is banked
* There is 293 TPE that players have which cannot be spent due to being over caps
Much like the scramblers, there are no ISFL players here which puts a strong roadblock in front of getting the stats for the trait in the first place. SeaWolves QB Raeni Clarke has enough TPE to potentially get it, but the DSFL cap prevents that from being an option and I'll again be interested to see where it gets prioritized after callup.
RB
There are 55 RBS - 36 ISFL, 16 DSFL, and 3 FAs.
Speed Back (expected capstone trait: Athlete) - 21 players (15 ISFL / 6 DSFL)
4 tier 5 (4 ISFL) - 4/4 with the trait
4 tier 4 (4 ISFL) - 4/4 with the trait
5 tier 2 (5 ISFL) - 1/5 with the trait
2 tier 1 (1 ISFL / 1 DSFL) - 0/2 with the trait
6 tier 0 (6 DSFL) - 0/6 with the trait
Total: 9/21 players have the trait
Other traits:
* Scat back: 8/21
* Raw talent: 7/21
* Role model: 2/21
For all Speed Back RBs:
* 84.5% of TPE is spent on stats
* 14.38% is spent on traits
* 1.12% is banked
* There is 178 TPE that players have which cannot be spent due to being over caps
For just the ISFL Speed Back RBs:
* 83.57% of TPE is spent on stats
* 15.32% is spent on traits
* 1.1% is banked
* There is 0 TPE that players have which cannot be spent due to being over caps
A much deeper archetype than any of the QB roles shows that the position does seem to find traits to be important. Athlete does narrowly edge out scat back and raw talent for popularity but all three are clearly popular. The tier 2 players do have some diversity of approaches - I see different stat prioritization and some going more trait heavy, which I assume is the kind of outcome that the migration team was looking for.
Receiving Back (expected capstone trait: Athlete) - 12 players (8 ISFL / 2 DSFL / 2 free agents)
1 tier 5 (1 ISFL) - 0/1 with the trait
1 tier 3 (1 ISFL) - 0/1 with the trait
5 tier 2 (5 ISFL) - 0/5 with the trait
1 tier 1 (1 ISFL) - 0/1 with the trait
4 tier 0 (2 DSFL / 2 free agent) - 0/4 with the trait
Total: 0/12 players have the trait
Other traits:
* Scat back: 2/12
For all Receiving Back RBs:
* 92.37% of TPE is spent on stats
* 1.8% is spent on traits
* 5.83% is banked
* There is 0 TPE that players have which cannot be spent due to being over caps
For just the ISFL Receiving Back RBs:
* 91.57% of TPE is spent on stats
* 2.02% is spent on traits
* 6.42% is banked
* There is (still) 0 TPE that players have which cannot be spent due to being over caps
This shows a clear whiff on guessing the capstone trait. I did specifically mention that my guess of 'most expensive' might not be right in my previous article:
me Wrote:Logically, I'd expect that players might want to build towards a different trait (eg scat back for speed back), but I'm sticking with my 'most expensive' heuristic.and I think that's clearly seen here with scat back apparently being more aligned with receiving than athlete. Still, only 2 players have any traits and those are the top two at the position. That seems to support a theory of traits being more of a late career purchase, but we'll have to see if that keeps up for other archetypes/positions.
Power Back (expected capstone trait: Athlete) - 13 players (5 ISFL / 7 DSFL / 1 free agents)
1 tier 5 (1 ISFL) - 1/1 with the trait
1 tier 3 (1 ISFL) - 0/1 with the trait
1 tier 2 (1 ISFL) - 0/1 with the trait
2 tier 1 (1 ISFL / 1 free agent) - 0/2 with the trait
8 tier 0 (1 ISFL / 7 DSFL) - 0/7 with the trait
Total: 1/13 players have the trait
Other traits:
* Raw talent: 1/13
* Role model: 1/13
For all Power Back RBs:
* 94.02% of TPE is spent on stats
* 4.77% is spent on traits
* 1.22% is banked
* There is 56 TPE that players have which cannot be spent due to being over caps
For just the ISFL Power Back RBs:
* 92.67% of TPE is spent on stats
* 6.76% is spent on traits
* 0.57% is banked
* There is 0 TPE that players have which cannot be spent due to being over caps
With only Richard Gilbert in the higher TPE ranges, the rest of the power backs are still working on stats to start. Gilbert has kept 3 traits in the first year of regression - maybe they've been useful?
Fullback (expected capstone trait: Athlete) - 9 players (8 ISFL / 1 DSFL)
2 tier 2 (2 ISFL) - 0/2 with the trait
3 tier 1 (3 ISFL) - 0/3 with the trait
4 tier 0 (3 ISFL / 1 DSFL) - 0/4 with the trait
Total: 0/9 players have the trait
Other traits:
* BlockingFB: 4/9
For all Fullback RBs:
* 93.11% of TPE is spent on stats
* 5.62% is spent on traits
* 1.27% is banked
* There is 0 TPE that players have which cannot be spent due to being over caps
For just the ISFL Fullback RBs:
* 93.03% of TPE is spent on stats
* 5.72% is spent on traits
* 1.26% is banked
* There is (still) 0 TPE that players have which cannot be spent due to being over caps
With half the ISFL fullback having the blocking fullback trait, I think that's a clear indication that it's the real capstone trait for the archetype. There are no super high earning players in the position, so there's no real way to see patterns on when other traits would get selected. It is interesting to see more than half of the ISFL teams have a fullback on their rosters despite the generally lower TPE totals (and especially given the later lack in blocking TEs) - are fullbacks that useful, or is it more a matter of TEs don't want to block?
WR
There are 60 WRs - 39 ISFL, 17 DSFL, and 3 FAs.
Speed Receiver (expected capstone trait: Deep Threat) - 30 players (19 ISFL / 8 DSFL / 3 Free Agent)
5 tier 6 (5 ISFL) - 5/5 with the trait
2 tier 5 (2 ISFL) - 2/2 with the trait
4 tier 4 (4 ISFL) - 4/4 with the trait
1 tier 3 (1 ISFL) - 0/1 with the trait
14 tier 2 (7 ISFL / 4 DSFL / 3 free agent) - 5/14 with the trait
1 tier 1 (1 DSFL) - 0/1 with the trait
3 tier 0 (3 DSFL) - 0/3 with the trait
Total: 16/30 players have the trait
Other traits:
* Athlete: 10/30
* Role model: 6/30
For all Speed Receiver WRs:
* 90.13% of TPE is spent on stats
* 8.25% is spent on traits
* 1.62% is banked
* There is 594 TPE that players have which cannot be spent due to being over caps
For just the ISFL Speed Receiver WRs:
* 89.52% of TPE is spent on stats
* 9.32% is spent on traits
* 1.16% is banked
* There is 578 TPE that players have which cannot be spent due to being over caps
As the solidly most popular trait, deep threat seems like the correct call for capstone. It is pretty cheap to get to if players focus on it but there's still a big range in where it's getting picked up - the lowest player with it is at 467 TPE while the highest without is at 904. Players do seem to be mostly prioritizing traits after hitting 71 endurance - maybe a sign that there's another tier effect for being in the 70s along the lines of the 79 speed bug?
Slot Receiver (expected capstone trait: Slot Receiver) - 17 players (13 ISFL / 4 DSFL)
1 tier 5 (1 ISFL) - 1/1 with the trait
3 tier 4 (3 ISFL) - 3/3 with the trait
3 tier 3 (3 ISFL) - 3/3 with the trait
8 tier 2 (6 ISFL / 2 DSFL) - 3/8 with the trait
1 tier 1 (1 DSFL) - 0/1 with the trait
1 tier 0 (1 DSFL) - 0/1 with the trait
Total: 10/17 players have the trait
Other traits:
* Athlete: 6/17
For all Slot Receiver WRs:
* 91.3% of TPE is spent on stats
* 7.19% is spent on traits
* 1.52% is banked
* There is 253 TPE that players have which cannot be spent due to being over caps
For just the ISFL Slot Receiver WRs:
* 91.65% of TPE is spent on stats
* 7.6% is spent on traits
* 0.74% is banked
* There is 0 TPE that players have which cannot be spent due to being over caps
Slot receiver seems to be another correct call with a solid lead over athlete for most popular trait. All the WRs have super wide tier 2 (min in the 100s to a max in the 800s) and that's where people seem to pick up slot receiver. Similar to speed receiver, the lowest TPE with the trait is 522 and the highest without is 828.
Possession Receiver (expected capstone trait: Slot Receiver) - 13 players (7 ISFL / 5 DSFL / 1 Free Agent)
1 tier 5 (1 ISFL) - 1/1 with the trait
7 tier 2 (6 ISFL / 1 free agent) - 2/7 with the trait
3 tier 1 (3 DSFL) - 0/3 with the trait
2 tier 0 (2 DSFL) - 0/2 with the trait
Total: 3/13 players have the trait
Other traits:
* Athlete: 1/13
For all Possession Receiver WRs:
* 94.57% of TPE is spent on stats
* 3.39% is spent on traits
* 2.03% is banked
* There is 0 TPE that players have which cannot be spent due to being over caps
For just the ISFL Possession Receiver WRs:
* 94.47% of TPE is spent on stats
* 3.94% is spent on traits
* 1.6% is banked
* There is (still) 0 TPE that players have which cannot be spent due to being over caps
With generally lower TPE players, trait adoption is lower for possession receivers than speed and slot. The slot receiver trait is still the most popular with players starting to pick it up in the tier 2 range. And, again similarly to the other WR archetypes, the lowest TPE with the trait is 564 while the highest without is 725.
TE
There are 30 TEs - 16 ISFL, 11 DSFL, and 3 FAs.
Vertical Threat (expected capstone trait: Receiving TE) - 11 players (8 ISFL / 3 DSFL)
4 tier 5 (4 ISFL) - 4/4 with the trait
1 tier 4 (1 ISFL) - 0/1 with the trait
2 tier 2 (2 ISFL) - 0/2 with the trait
1 tier 1 (1 ISFL) - 0/1 with the trait
3 tier 0 (3 DSFL) - 0/3 with the trait
Total: 4/11 players have the trait
Other traits:
* Athlete: 4/11
* Role model: 2/11
For all Vertical Threat TEs:
* 83.5% of TPE is spent on stats
* 14.11% is spent on traits
* 2.4% is banked
* There is 0 TPE that players have which cannot be spent due to being over caps
For just the ISFL Vertical Threat TEs:
* 83.65% of TPE is spent on stats
* 14.79% is spent on traits
* 1.56% is banked
* There is (still) 0 TPE that players have which cannot be spent due to being over caps
With equal popularity between receiving TE and athlete, I can't really make a call on which is higher priority for players without going to look for which one was selected first and reading through update pages takes way too long so I'm not going to do that right now. I'll at least call this a tentatively correct selection. There's an interesting split near the tier 4/5 border - Tree Gelbman with 786 TPE has no traits while Ragnar Krashwagen at 821 has receiving TE and athlete. Through the week 4 games, here are the stat lines:
Gelbman: 25 catches, 206 yards, 1 TD, 18 pancakes, 0 sacks allowed
Krashwagen: 19 catches, 216 yards, 2 TDs, 14 pancakes, 1 sack allowed
Krashwagen has a considerably higher YPC and an extra TD, but Gelbman has better blocking. Not sure if that's enough data to draw a real conclusion, but it's interesting.
Possession TE (expected capstone trait: Receiving TE) - 18 players (8 ISFL / 8 DSFL / 2 Free Agent)
3 tier 5 (3 ISFL) - 2/3 with the trait
1 tier 4 (1 ISFL) - 0/1 with the trait
3 tier 2 (3 ISFL) - 0/3 with the trait
6 tier 1 (5 DSFL / 1 free agent) - 0/6 with the trait
5 tier 0 (1 ISFL / 3 DSFL / 1 free agent) - 0/5 with the trait
Total: 2/18 players have the trait
Other traits:
* Athlete: 2/18
For all Possession TEs:
* 92.32% of TPE is spent on stats
* 5.14% is spent on traits
* 2.54% is banked
* There is 178 TPE that players have which cannot be spent due to being over caps
For just the ISFL Possession TEs:
* 92.36% of TPE is spent on stats
* 7.02% is spent on traits
* 0.61% is banked
* There is 0 TPE that players have which cannot be spent due to being over caps
With another equal split between receiving TE and athlete, it's still hard to pick the "real" capstone. Receiving TE does cost 150, so maybe the prospect of having to bank so much TPE with no immediate return is concerning?
Blocking TE (expected capstone trait: Blocking TE) - 1 players (1 Free Agent)
1 tier 2 (1 free agent) - 0/1 with the trait
Total: 0/1 players have the trait
And now we come to the least-adopted archetype in the league, poor inactive FA Cleg Manclaw. It looks like he was on Sarasota at the time of position switch since someone else from the team did an update for the new sim. He's had no updates since but has 100% of TPE spend on stats. Hope to see you back, Cleg!
The more interesting thing to me than Cleg's build is that the fullbacks are relatively popular while blocking TEs aren't. I didn't really look through the various player pages, but perhaps the RBs are also inactives who were converted for team convenience? There are definitely more RBs than TEs, so that could explain it. The other major reason I could see is that in testing blocking TEs weren't as useful as FBs and/or that they were too ineffective receiving if they built to block. Still, if there was a single archetype that I think the sim team should look into improving this is the clear winner given the barren wasteland of users in it.
OL
There are 56 OLinesman - 47 ISFL and 9 DSFL.
Athletic OL (expected capstone trait: Tenacious blocker) - 19 players (18 ISFL / 1 DSFL)
2 tier 5 (2 ISFL) - 2/2 with the trait
1 tier 4 (1 ISFL) - 1/1 with the trait
5 tier 2 (5 ISFL) - 1/5 with the trait
5 tier 1 (5 ISFL) - 0/5 with the trait
6 tier 0 (5 ISFL / 1 DSFL) - 0/6 with the trait
Total: 4/19 players have the trait
Other traits:
* Role model: 1/19
For all Athletic OLine:
* 92.08% of TPE is spent on stats
* 5.17% is spent on traits
* 2.75% is banked
* There is 0 TPE that players have which cannot be spent due to being over caps
For just the ISFL Athletic OLine (sure it's basically the same with only 1 DSFL player, but there's a format OK):
* 92.01% of TPE is spent on stats
* 5.22% is spent on traits
* 2.77% is banked
* There is (still) 0 TPE that players have which cannot be spent due to being over caps
Tenacious blocker looks like another correct capstone call. However, it's interesting to see that the players without it generally have little banked. The lowest TPE with the trait is at 852 TPE and the next highest player is at 820 with 0 banked, meaning the earliest the trait could be picked up at is 970 total TPE. Not sure if that's a sign that those players don't consider it more valuable or if there are other factors in play. The other interesting (but not trait related) observation is that there is only one DSFL player with this archetype. Maybe DSFL OL are encourage to go into other archetypes? Athletic I believe is the more pass protection archetype and I remember the DSFL as being less pass-heavy than the ISFL.
Balanced OL (expected capstone trait: Tenacious blocker) - 20 players (16 ISFL / 4 DSFL)
2 tier 5 (2 ISFL) - 1/2 with the trait
1 tier 2 (1 ISFL) - 0/1 with the trait
2 tier 1 (2 ISFL) - 0/2 with the trait
15 tier 0 (11 ISFL / 4 DSFL) - 0/15 with the trait
Total: 1/20 players have the trait
Other traits:
* Role model: 2/20
For all Balanced OLine:
* 94.5% of TPE is spent on stats
* 2.79% is spent on traits
* 2.7% is banked
* There is 1 TPE that players have which cannot be spent due to being over caps
For just the ISFL Balanced OLine:
* 94.14% of TPE is spent on stats
* 3% is spent on traits
* 2.86% is banked
* There is 0 TPE that players have which cannot be spent due to being over caps
Role model has the single selection lead over tenacious blocker, but Adam Mellott has 135 banked TPE that seems clearly earmarked for that in the next week or two. In some ways, the second role model selection is an outlier as it is taken by 507 TPE Manhattan Project. I suppose if you're engineering nuclear devices you would want to be seen as a role model, so I approve.
Mauler OL (expected capstone trait: Tenacious blocker) - 17 players (13 ISFL / 4 DSFL)
1 tier 3 (1 ISFL) - 1/1 with the trait
4 tier 2 (4 ISFL) - 1/4 with the trait
12 tier 0 (8 ISFL / 4 DSFL) - 0/12 with the trait
Total: 2/17 players have the trait
Other traits:
* Role model: 1/17
For all Balanced OLine:
* 92.63% of TPE is spent on stats
* 4.13% is spent on traits
* 3.24% is banked
* There is 0 TPE that players have which cannot be spent due to being over caps
For just the ISFL Balanced OLine:
* 92.07% of TPE is spent on stats
* 4.48% is spent on traits
* 3.45% is banked
* There is (still) 0 TPE that players have which cannot be spent due to being over caps
Tenacious blocker is back in the lead over role model, and I think the high percentage of banked TPE reflects that 3 more players are saving up for it given that there are 3 players with 80, 74, and 55 TPE banked.
DT
There are 34 DTs - 24 ISFL and 10 DSFL.
Nose Tackle (expected capstone trait: Bull Rusher) - 8 players (5 ISFL / 3 DSFL)
1 tier 6 (1 ISFL) - 1/1 with the trait
3 tier 5 (3 ISFL) - 3/3 with the trait
1 tier 2 (1 ISFL) - 1/1 with the trait
3 tier 0 (3 DSFL) - 0/3 with the trait
Total: 5/8 players have the trait
Other traits:
* Speed rusher: 4/8
* Competitor: 3/8
* Perceptive: 2/8
* Role model: 2/8
For all Nose Tackle DTs:
* 78.47% of TPE is spent on stats
* 19.26% is spent on traits
* 2.27% is banked
* There is 15 TPE that players have which cannot be spent due to being over caps
For just the ISFL Nose Tackle DTs:
* 76.48% of TPE is spent on stats
* 21.03% is spent on traits
* 2.48% is banked
* There is (still) 15 TPE that players have which cannot be spent due to being over caps
With a bunch of high TPE players, nose tackles are heavily invested into traits. Bull rushers is the slim favorite over speed rusher, but the player that doesn't have both is almost 400 TPE behind the next-lowest player.
All-purpose (expected capstone trait: Bull Rusher) - 9 players (6 ISFL / 3 DSFL)
2 tier 5 (2 ISFL) - 2/2 with the trait
3 tier 4 (3 ISFL) - 2/3 with the trait
2 tier 2 (1 ISFL / 1 DSFL) - 0/2 with the trait
1 tier 1 (1 DSFL) - 0/1 with the trait
1 tier 0 (1 DSFL) - 0/1 with the trait
Total: 4/9 players have the trait
Other traits:
* Speed rusher: 4/9
* Perceptive: 2/9
* Competitor: 1/9
* Role model: 1/9
For all All-purpose DTs:
* 84.8% of TPE is spent on stats
* 14.88% is spent on traits
* 0.32% is banked
* There is 263 TPE that players have which cannot be spent due to being over caps
For just the ISFL All-purpose DTs:
* 82.88% of TPE is spent on stats
* 16.79% is spent on traits
* 0.34% is banked
* There is 0 TPE that players have which cannot be spent due to being over caps
A tie between bull rusher and speed rusher makes it hard to pick which one is the "real" capstone, but given that the archetype is literally "all-around" it makes sense to see different players focusing on different things given interest or team needs (it's not obvious from the table, but there are 3 players with both bull/speed, 1 with just bull, and 1 with just speed).
Interior Rusher (expected capstone trait: Speed Rusher) - 17 players (13 ISFL / 4 DSFL)
4 tier 5 (4 ISFL) - 4/4 with the trait
3 tier 4 (3 ISFL) - 2/3 with the trait
1 tier 3 (1 ISFL) - 0/1 with the trait
8 tier 2 (5 ISFL / 3 DSFL) - 2/8 with the trait
1 tier 1 (1 DSFL) - 0/1 with the trait
Total: 8/17 players have the trait
Other traits:
* Bull rusher: 4/17
* Perceptive: 2/17
* Competitor: 1/17
* Role model: 1/17
For all Interior Rusher DTs:
* 86.36% of TPE is spent on stats
* 11.34% is spent on traits
* 2.31% is banked
* There is 126 TPE that players have which cannot be spent due to being over caps
For just the ISFL Interior Rusher DTs:
* 85.13% of TPE is spent on stats
* 12.57% is spent on traits
* 2.3% is banked
* There is 0 TPE that players have which cannot be spent due to being over caps
Speed rusher is in the clear lead over bull rusher, so I apparently picked that part correctly. There is one player with just bull rusher, so again it's something that people are apparently customizing. More interestingly, though, is that there are two sub-300 TPE players who picked up speed rusher (which for reference is the tier 2 category - enough TPE to purchase the capstone trait and its prereqs). I calculated the minimum TPE required to do that as 215 in my previous article, so it does look like those players went directly for it as a priority.
DE
There are 43 DEs - 29 ISFL, 13 DSFL, and 1 FA.
Run Stuffer (expected capstone trait: Bull Rusher) - 3 players (2 ISFL / 1 DSFL)
1 tier 3 (1 ISFL) - 1/1 with the trait
1 tier 2 (1 ISFL) - 1/1 with the trait
1 tier 0 (1 DSFL) - 0/1 with the trait
Total: 2/3 players have the trait
No other traits
For all Run Stuffer DEs:
* 79.21% of TPE is spent on stats
* 13.54% is spent on traits
* 7.24% is banked
* There is 0 TPE that players have which cannot be spent due to being over caps
For just the ISFL Run Stuffer DEs:
* 80.24% of TPE is spent on stats
* 14.02% is spent on traits
* 5.75% is banked
* There is (still) 0 TPE that players have which cannot be spent due to being over caps
Run stuffer has a low population, but both ISFL players are on the Hawks. Have they identified some simulation strategy that works really well? The Hawks are collectively 7th in the league in rushing yards and they do have a decent-looking stat line through 4 games:
Etrigan T. Slayer / Maui Waialiki combined: 19 tackles / 4TFL / 3 FF 1 FR / 7 sacks
That's not enough to get me to go switch my build immediately, but if they can keep up that pace for the rest of the season it would be pretty interesting.
Power Rusher (expected capstone trait: Bull Rusher) - 18 players (13 ISFL / 4 DSFL / 1 Free Agent)
2 tier 6 (2 ISFL) - 2/2 with the trait
4 tier 5 (4 ISFL) - 4/4 with the trait
4 tier 4 (4 ISFL) - 3/4 with the trait
2 tier 2 (2 ISFL) - 0/2 with the trait
2 tier 1 (1 ISFL / 1 free agent) - 0/2 with the trait
4 tier 0 (4 DSFL) - 0/4 with the trait
Total: 9/18 players have the trait
Other traits:
* Competitor: 6/18
* Perceptive: 5/18
* Role model: 3/18
For all Power Rusher DEs:
* 85.11% of TPE is spent on stats
* 13.28% is spent on traits
* 1.61% is banked
* There is 117 TPE that players have which cannot be spent due to being over caps
For just the ISFL Power Rusher DEs:
* 83.98% of TPE is spent on stats
* 14.51% is spent on traits
* 1.5% is banked
* There is 80 TPE that players have which cannot be spent due to being over caps
Bull rusher has a solid lead in popularity, but the overall trait adoption is high. Most of that looks to be due to having 5 players over 1000 TPE (plus Tex Wrecks at 997), allowing a few more purchases overall. It looks like Mike Karpaasi is saving up for the trait as well, with 86 banked.
Speed Rusher (expected capstone trait: Speed Rusher) - 22 players (14 ISFL / 8 DSFL)
4 tier 5 (4 ISFL) - 4/4 with the trait
3 tier 4 (3 ISFL) - 3/3 with the trait
6 tier 2 (6 ISFL) - 1/6 with the trait
1 tier 1 (1 ISFL) - 0/1 with the trait
8 tier 0 (8 DSFL) - 0/8 with the trait
Total: 8/22 players have the trait
Other traits:
* Perceptive: 7/18
* Competitor: 4/18
* Role model: 1/18
For all Speed Rusher DEs:
* 87.23% of TPE is spent on stats
* 11.65% is spent on traits
* 1.12% is banked
* There is 34 TPE that players have which cannot be spent due to being over caps
For just the ISFL Speed Rusher DEs:
* 86.18% of TPE is spent on stats
* 12.83% is spent on traits
* 0.98% is banked
* There is 0 TPE that players have which cannot be spent due to being over caps
Speed rusher is narrowly in the lead for traits, but perceptive has a strong second-place in with just one fewer purchase (and 2 players with just perceptive). The description for perceptive says "More likely to go after the ball carrier on run plays" so I could see that being a way to help deal with draws (does the sim even have those?) or other pass-rush fakeouts?
LB
There are 65 LBs - 44 ISFL, 18 DSFL, and 3 FAs.
Pass Rusher (expected capstone trait: Athlete) - 40 players (28 ISFL / 10 DSFL / 2 Free Agents)
3 tier 6 (3 ISFL) - 3/3 with the trait
12 tier 5 (12 ISFL) - 10/12 with the trait
4 tier 4 (4 ISFL) - 2/4 with the trait
2 tier 3 (2 ISFL) - 0/2 with the trait
7 tier 2 (6 ISFL / 1 DSFL) - 0/7 with the trait
3 tier 1 (1 ISFL / 1 DSFL / 1 free agent) - 0/3 with the trait
9 tier 0 (8 DSFL / 1 free agent) - 0/9 with the trait
Total: 15/40 players have the trait
Other traits:
* Speed rusher: 17/40
* Competitor: 14/40
* Role model: 5/40
For all Pass Rusher LBs:
* 85.68% of TPE is spent on stats
* 11.93% is spent on traits
* 2.39% is banked
* There is 816 TPE that players have which cannot be spent due to being over caps
For just the ISFL Pass Rusher LBs:
* 85.22% of TPE is spent on stats
* 12.95% is spent on traits
* 1.83% is banked
* There is 403 TPE that players have which cannot be spent due to being over caps
Similar to the case with running backs, athlete was the most expensive trait but I was actually expecting speed rusher to be more popular and that is what happened. It's actually a very narrow lead with only 2 more players taking it, but I'm guessing some of that is to the completely stacked archetype here with 15 players in tier 5 or 6. Despite that, the percentage spent on TPE is lower than some of the DT archetypes - I think it's probably just because the total trait cost is higher at 300 for DT and 250 for LB.
Versatile (expected capstone trait: Athlete) - 11 players (7 ISFL / 3 DSFL / 1 Free Agent)
1 tier 5 (1 ISFL) - 1/1 with the trait
1 tier 4 (1 ISFL) - 1/1 with the trait
1 tier 3 (1 ISFL) - 0/1 with the trait
3 tier 2 (3 ISFL) - 0/3 with the trait
1 tier 1 (1 ISFL) - 0/1 with the trait
4 tier 0 (3 DSFL / 1 free agent) - 0/4 with the trait
Total: 2/11 players have the trait
Other traits:
* Competitor: 2/11
* Perceptive: 2/11
* Speed rusher: 1/11
For all Versatile LBs:
* 92.33% of TPE is spent on stats
* 6.65% is spent on traits
* 1.01% is banked
* There is 96 TPE that players have which cannot be spent due to being over caps
For just the ISFL Versatile LBs:
* 91.54% of TPE is spent on stats
* 7.78% is spent on traits
* 0.68% is banked
* There is 0 TPE that players have which cannot be spent due to being over caps
With presumably less focus on pass rushing, speed rusher is lower for versatile. Seeing competitor and perceptive above it (and tied with athlete) is interesting to me. The lower average TPE of the position vs. the pass rushers is also very clearly showing in the lower percentage of TPE spent on traits.
Coverage (expected capstone trait: Athlete) - 14 players (9 ISFL / 5 DSFL)
7 tier 5 (7 ISFL) - 3/7 with the trait
1 tier 3 (1 ISFL) - 0/1 with the trait
1 tier 2 (1 ISFL) - 0/1 with the trait
5 tier 0 (5 DSFL) - 0/5 with the trait
Total: 3/14 players have the trait
Other traits:
* Perceptive: 7/14
* Competitor: 4/14
For all Coverage LBs:
* 90.36% of TPE is spent on stats
* 8.94% is spent on traits
* 0.7% is banked
* There is 0 TPE that players have which cannot be spent due to being over caps
For just the ISFL Coverage LBs:
* 89.6% of TPE is spent on stats
* 9.58% is spent on traits
* 0.81% is banked
* There is (still) 0 TPE that players have which cannot be spent due to being over caps
Perceptive is the huge winner here, and even competitor gets selected more often. The (other) text on perceptive is "More likely to intercept passes" which sounds pretty relevant for coverage, and competitor's "More likely to defend passes" sounds again directly related to what you're trying to do with coverage. So yeah, I think athlete clearly makes sense to lose out for the optimal capstone trait.
CB
There are 58 CBs - 40 ISFL, 16 DSFL, and 3 FAs.
Cover Corner (expected capstone trait: Shut down corner) - 32 players (21 ISFL / 10 DSFL / 1 Free Agent)
10 tier 5 (10 ISFL) - 9/10 with the trait
1 tier 4 (1 ISFL) - 1/1 with the trait
3 tier 3 (3 ISFL) - 1/3 with the trait
11 tier 2 (7 ISFL / 3 DSFL / 1 free agent) - 3/11 with the trait
1 tier 1 (1 DSFL) - 0/1 with the trait
6 tier 0 (6 DSFL) - 0/6 with the trait
Total: 14/32 players have the trait
Other traits:
* Perceptive: 10/32
* Athlete: 4/32
* Competitor: 3/32
* Role model: 1/32
For all Cover CBs:
* 90.59% of TPE is spent on stats
* 8.25% is spent on traits
* 1.16% is banked
* There is 323 TPE that players have which cannot be spent due to being over caps
For just the ISFL Cover CBs:
* 89.53% of TPE is spent on stats
* 9.37% is spent on traits
* 1.11% is banked
* There is 0 TPE that players have which cannot be spent due to being over caps
Shut down corner has a reasonably expected lead here, but the presumptive value of perceptive in helping to intercept passes gets it into a strong second place. I'm surprised to see that competitor is lower here given how popular it is for the coverage LBs, but it could be that CBs are tackling less often or that the requirements are further from the baseline for the archetype?
Physical Corner (expected capstone trait: Press corner) - 20 players (15 ISFL / 5 DSFL / 1 Free Agent)
3 tier 6 (3 ISFL) - 3/3 with the trait
1 tier 5 (1 ISFL) - 1/1 with the trait
6 tier 4 (6 ISFL) - 3/6 with the trait
8 tier 2 (5 ISFL / 2 DSFL / 1 free agent) - 1/8 with the trait
2 tier 1 (2 DSFL) - 0/2 with the trait
Total: 8/20 players have the trait
Other traits:
* Perceptive: 9/20
* Competitor: 8/20
* Athlete: 6/20
* Role model: 3/20
For all Physical CBs:
* 86.93% of TPE is spent on stats
* 11.36% is spent on traits
* 1.71% is banked
* There is 263 TPE that players have which cannot be spent due to being over caps
For just the ISFL Physical CBs:
* 85.92% of TPE is spent on stats
* 12.33% is spent on traits
* 1.75% is banked
* There is 87 TPE that players have which cannot be spent due to being over caps
Perceptive narrowly edges press corner while competitor ties it for most popular trait picks. It's really cheap to get press corner, so I'm surprised to see it's not more popular than it is but I guess the interception/pass defense bonuses from the other traits are good. Or maybe teams aren't actually running protections where press corner helps as much?
Slot Corner (expected capstone trait: Slot corner) - 6 players (4 ISFL / 1 DSFL / 1 Free Agent)
1 tier 5 (1 ISFL) - 0/1 with the trait
2 tier 4 (2 ISFL) - 1/2 with the trait
1 tier 2 (1 ISFL) - 0/1 with the trait
2 tier 0 (1 DSFL / 1 free agent) - 0/2 with the trait
Total: 1/6 players have the trait
Other traits:
* Competitor: 2/6
* Perceptive: 1/6
* Role model: 1/6
For all Slot CBs:
* 92.89% of TPE is spent on stats
* 6.74% is spent on traits
* 0.38% is banked
* There is 0 TPE that players have which cannot be spent due to being over caps
For just the ISFL Slot CBs:
* 92.63% of TPE is spent on stats
* 7.17% is spent on traits
* 0.2% is banked
* There is (still) 0 TPE that players have which cannot be spent due to being over caps
There's only 4 ISFL players, so competitor being ahead by 1 might or might not be significant. I could see that in theory slot CBs are more often playing closer to the line and therefore getting involved in more running plays and tackling, but I haven't really looked to see if the numbers support that guess or not.
S
There are 43 Safeties - 31 ISFL, 11 DSFL, and 1 FA.
Center Fielder (expected capstone trait: Slot corner) - 16 players (12 ISFL / 3 DSFL / 1 Free Agent)
1 tier 6 (1 ISFL) - 1/1 with the trait
2 tier 5 (2 ISFL) - 2/2 with the trait
3 tier 4 (3 ISFL) - 3/3 with the trait
7 tier 2 (6 ISFL / 1 free agent) - 3/7 with the trait
1 tier 1 (1 DSFL) - 0/1 with the trait
2 tier 0 (2 DSFL) - 0/2 with the trait
Total: 9/16 players have the trait
Other traits:
* Athlete: 6/16
* Competitor: 4/16
* Role model: 1/16
For all Center Fielder Safeties:
* 90.63% of TPE is spent on stats
* 8.2% is spent on traits
* 1.17% is banked
* There is 191 TPE that players have which cannot be spent due to being over caps
For just the ISFL Center Fielder Safeties:
* 89.84% of TPE is spent on stats
* 8.88% is spent on traits
* 1.27% is banked
* There is 57 TPE that players have which cannot be spent due to being over caps
Center fielder is the clear top pick with the top 9 players by TPE all having it and then a mix of athlete and competitor sprinkled around. That being said, the cutoff line is not a huge gap of TPE, so I'm not sure from this casual inspection if there's something that leads some players to have gotten it and not the others.
Ball Hawk (expected capstone trait: Perceptive) - 17 players (10 ISFL / 7 DSFL)
3 tier 5 (3 ISFL) - 3/3 with the trait
2 tier 4 (2 ISFL) - 2/2 with the trait
8 tier 2 (5 ISFL / 3 DSFL) - 0/8 with the trait
4 tier 0 (4 DSFL) - 0/4 with the trait
Total: 5/17 players have the trait
Other traits:
* Competitor: 4/17
* Role model: 3/17
* Athlete: 1/17
For all Ball Hawk Safeties:
* 91.62% of TPE is spent on stats
* 6.39% is spent on traits
* 1.99% is banked
* There is 594 TPE that players have which cannot be spent due to being over caps
For just the ISFL Ball Hawk Safeties:
* 90.86% of TPE is spent on stats
* 7.24% is spent on traits
* 1.89% is banked
* There is 0 TPE that players have which cannot be spent due to being over caps
I seem to have very narrowly guessed right by picking perceptive, but competitor is right behind it. Seeing role model next is interesting - I wonder if it's because safety penalties tend to be related to more yards/bigger plays/automatic first downs, and so reducing them helps more? Not sure, really, if that's why or if there's something else.
Enforcer (expected capstone trait: Box safety) - 10 players (9 ISFL / 1 DSFL)
2 tier 4 (2 ISFL) - 1/2 with the trait
1 tier 3 (1 ISFL) - 1/1 with the trait
6 tier 2 (6 ISFL) - 2/6 with the trait
1 tier 0 (1 DSFL) - 0/1 with the trait
Total: 4/10 players have the trait
Other traits:
* Athlete: 2/10
* Competitor: 1/10
For all Enforcer Safeties:
* 93.29% of TPE is spent on stats
* 5.52% is spent on traits
* 1.18% is banked
* There is 0 TPE that players have which cannot be spent due to being over caps
For just the ISFL Enforcer Safeties:
* 93.48% of TPE is spent on stats
* 5.61% is spent on traits
* 0.91% is banked
* There is (still) 0 TPE that players have which cannot be spent due to being over caps
Enforcers are heavy on the box safety trait, with athlete and competitor trailing. Nothing especially surprises me about that...unless you look at the ordering on who has the traits. The second and fourth highest TPE players have no traits, while the first, third, and fifth/sixth do. Interesting pattern, not sure if there's a tested reason for that or not.
K/P
There are 25 kickers - 15 ISFL, 8 DSFL, and 2 FAs.
Accurate (expected capstone trait: Steel toe boots) - 20 players (12 ISFL / 6 DSFL / 2 Free Agent)
1 tier 5 (1 ISFL) - 1/1 with the trait
2 tier 4 (2 ISFL) - 1/2 with the trait
3 tier 1 (3 ISFL) - 0/3 with the trait
14 tier 0 (6 ISFL / 6 DSFL / 1 free agent) - 0/14 with the trait
Total: 2/20 players have the trait
No other traits
For all Accurate Kickers:
* 88.42% of TPE is spent on stats
* 3.78% is spent on traits
* 7.8% is banked
* There is 114 TPE that players have which cannot be spent due to being over caps
For just the ISFL Accurate Kickers
* 85.66% of TPE is spent on stats
* 4.79% is spent on traits
* 9.54% is banked
* There is 0 TPE that players have which cannot be spent due to being over caps
Unsurprisingly, given that you can only get 2 attributes and the second requires the first, the first attribute is the most popular. Really the only surprising thing is seeing the huge amount of banked TPE that the kickers have. Jake Fencik in particular has enough to purchase steel toe but isn't yet for...some reason? The other interesting thing is seeing that ISFL rosteredness is less stratified by TPE than most other positions. I'm not sure if that's because higher earning on kickers doesn't pay off and so teams focus on active players or if there's a deeper reason.
Power (expected capstone trait: Straight shooter) - 5 players (3 ISFL / 2 DSFL)
1 tier 5 (1 ISFL) - 1/1 with the trait
1 tier 4 (1 ISFL) - 1/1 with the trait
3 tier 0 (1 ISFL / 2 DSFL) - 0/3 with the trait
Total: 2/5 players have the trait
Other traits:
* Laser Sights: 1/5
For all Power Kickers:
* 75.58% of TPE is spent on stats
* 21.53% is spent on traits
* 2.89% is banked
* There is 0 TPE that players have which cannot be spent due to being over caps
For just the ISFL Power Kickers
* 74.48% of TPE is spent on stats
* 22.5% is spent on traits
* 3.02% is banked
* There is (still) 0 TPE that players have which cannot be spent due to being over caps
First as an aside, I have to say that having "power" for the archetype name vs. "accurate" is annoying - it should be power/accuracy or it should be powerful/accurate. Mixing those up is a crime against consistency.
Beyond that, the power archetype shares the "no decisions except when" trait layout as accurate and so it's not surprising that straight shooter is the most common. I do wonder if the requirements persist in regression, though - could Matthew McDairmid cash in straight shooter but keep laser sights next year? The answer probably doesn't matter.
Non-positional breakdowns
Having examined each position in detail, I'm now going to look at some details by league and player tier.
Tier 6: 19 players (19 ISFL)
* 19/19 players have their archetype's capstone trait
* 82.63% of TPE is spent on stats
* 16.57% is spent on traits
* 0.8% is banked
* There is 1290 TPE that players have which cannot be spent due to being over caps
Unsurprisingly, players who have enough TPE to get all the stats and all the traits have their capstone trait. I believe some of the banked TPE is from WRs who didn't max their blocking stats - maybe the reduces the rate they run routes or something? No real surprises though.
Tier 5: 81 players (81 ISFL)
* 70/81 players have their archetype's capstone trait
* 83.3% of TPE is spent on stats
* 15.2% is spent on traits
* 1.5% is banked
* There is 0 TPE that players have which cannot be spent due to being over caps
With a lot more total players, the spent TPE breakdown looks pretty similar to tier 6 despite the ~13.6% of players who haven't picked up the capstone trait.
Tier 4: 53 players (53 ISFL)
* 39/53 players have their archetype's capstone trait
* 87.5% of TPE is spent on stats
* 10.65% is spent on traits
* 1.85% is banked
* There is 0 TPE that players have which cannot be spent due to being over caps
With less total TPE, the percent of players not yet getting their capstone trait (~26.4%) is about double tier 5. The more telling data is that the percent of TPE spent on traits is down by a third - clearly more focus on stats instead.
Tier 3: 19 players (19 ISFL)
* 8/19 players have their archetype's capstone trait
* 91.39% of TPE is spent on stats
* 7.38% is spent on traits
* 1.23% is banked
* There is 97 TPE that players have which cannot be spent due to being over caps
The trend of fewer players with the capstone and less TPE on traits continues in tier 3 and I'd expect that to pick up more as we go on.
Tier 2: 137 players (105 ISFL / 24 DSFL / 8 Free Agent)
* 29/137 players have their archetype's capstone trait
* 94.1% of TPE is spent on stats
* 3.78% is spent on traits
* 2.12% is banked
* There is 2572 TPE that players have which cannot be spent due to being over caps
This is the first tier to contain any DSFL players, which I assume is the main source of the unspendable TPE. TPE spent on stats does increase further as expected, though I'll admit the percent of players with their capstone trait is higher than I was expecting at ~21.2%
Tier 1: 44 players (22 ISFL / 18 DSFL / 4 Free Agent)
* 0/44 players have their archetype's capstone trait
* 95.37% of TPE is spent on stats
* 0.95% is spent on traits
* 3.68% is banked
* There is 452 TPE that players have which cannot be spent due to being over caps
Tier one players have (by definition) enough TPE that they could have purchased their archetype's capstone trait and its prerequisites. I'm not super surprised that it hasn't been done, but I am somewhat surprised to see that there are other traits purchased.
Tier 0: 141 players (35 ISFL / 98 DSFL / 8 Free Agent)
* 0/141 players have their archetype's capstone trait
* 96.44% of TPE is spent on stats
* 0.18% is spent on traits
* 3.38% is banked
* There is 761 TPE that players have which cannot be spent due to being over caps
At tier 0 we unsurprisingly see most of the DSFL players. Most archetypes require more TPE than the DSFL cap to purchase the capstone trait, so I'm not surprised to see that none of the tier zero players have purchased it. As with tier 1, though, I'm surprised that some players have other traits purchased instead.
Capstone summary
So after going through each position, I think it's clear that the "most expensive will be most popular" guess I had was not perfectly right, but I think it worked surprisingly well as a heuristic with minimal room for judgement. If this project hadn't taken approximately forever to do, I'd say it would be interesting to check the trait distribution every season and monitoring to see if different traits get more or less popular over time.
Other conclusions
So, did I learn anything from this or is there anything I would recommend that the sim balancing team look at?
* Most positions have pretty good archetype diversity. The biggest (negative) standout to me is the blocking TE which has a lone inactive free agent in its ranks. ISFL QB starters are also solidly concentrated in two of the five archetypes, but I don't think that's nearly as concerning (though it might be worth keeping an eye on the balance in the future)
* The TPE tracker is an amazing tool but occasionally has some data quality issues due to player page formatting or errors in updating/keeping the update thread and all values on the player page correct. If anyone else is thinking on using it as a primary source, be aware that it is not 100% correct. It's (unsurprisingly) worst at the traits, since they're a bunch of string information strewn about. If the relevant parties want the tracker to be more useful, maybe there's some way to work on the trait handling?
Draft Steal (retired S35 CB) - Profile/Update | Wiki
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