NBA 2K11 - Let's talk about Association improvements

[Pared]

Guys,

I want feedback from those heavily involved in running an Association. There are a few things I'd ask you guys answer, and being as specific as possible will benefit YOU in the long run.

1. What is your opinion of the mode over all? Does it offer what you would expect it to offer?

2. Simulating in an Association - how are the numbers from players overall? Are you seeing a good variance? Are you seeing - guys recover/not recover from injuries; young players become studs/busts; early/late retirements; player holdouts/trade requests; believable player stats? Please don't specific to one player (such as Chris Bosh is getting too many rebounds!).

3. Draft classes - what would you like to see added/changed to them?

4. Somewhat going into one area in more detail - player progression/regression: how is it working in your eyes? Looks good?

Please, if you're going to make a claim that one thing should DEFINITELY be a certain way, please provide proof.

Remember, everything you can offer here will directly impact NBA 2K11.

Thanks fellas.

PS - If you're using a heavily edited roster, please do not post things as fact unless you've seen the same thing with 2k's official rosters!

[Comduklakis]

1. Despite complaints about various things, I love the assocation. It's just great to control a team (or 30 in my case) and made trades, sign free agents, make rotation decisions, draft, etc. I think it offers the things I want, the problem is how well those things are done. As has been mentioned in other threads, the CPU logic is broken for trades. The same guys getting traded over and over, trades that are lopsided, trades that make no sense for non-contenders when they pick up big contracts instead of shedding payroll, etc. Also the CPU tends to stockpile too many of one position such as 6 pgs rather than build a team with need in mind. We all know the latest patch made many turn off player roles. I'm not that enamored with player roles to begin with. Too many whiners when the NBA is filled mostly with guys who understand rotations and roles and play hard when called upon. Also they need to fix guys from complaining about playing time when they get in foul trouble or injured. The player roles need to be more forgiving. Sure if Wade suddenly is playing 10 minutes a game for 10 games then maybe he can complain, but having guys like Kwame Brown complain about minutes whether they are listed as a role player or not, is simply silly. ]

They also need to fix the draft classes that the CPU generates. The shot tendencies and foul tendencies are ridiculously low on top picks and most of the shooting skills are bad too. If you sim for years the league shooting percentage drops to about .400 as the NBA guys retire and the CPU generated players take over. The scoring per team also drops badly as most teams struggle to score 90 after fifteen seasons.

2. As stated above, simming with CPU players can mess up stats. Otherwise simming isn't bad, save the 3 pt big man glitch if you have player roles on. The superstars tend to score a touch low. Carmelo, Wade, Kobe, etc. are all in teh 23/24 ppg area rather than 27 or 28. But overall the sim stats are not bad at all. Little too much parity also. Most teams are between 30 and 50 wins with only 3 or 4 teams being outliers and being really bad or really good. Overall though come playoff time the Lakers, Spurs, Cavs, and Magic tend to dominate the first couple years until rosters get more jumbled. Before I turned off player roles, the rotations were rough. The CPU played the starters way too many minutes, thus exacerbating the morale problem. Injury recovery isn't bad, no issues with that. I've gone through probably 8 or 9 associations and I like how sometimes certain guys get better and other times they don't. Thabeet was a bust most times, but this current one suddenly he is working out better. Without player roles on though, guys like Jennings and Tyreke tend to stay the same instead of getting better. That is why that desperately needs to be fixed. No problems with retirements, very realistic. If McDyess gets his title, he retires, etc. Again with player roles on, too many scrubs are demanding trades and the CPU is thus way too active in trading guys around. Malcontents like Deonte West will get moved 3 or 4 times in a season. The other issue I have is free agents who don't get signed in the offseason failing to modify their demands. They did tweak it some, but still most are demanding a 5 million dollar Mid Level exception 2 months into the season if they are rated a 65 or above.

3. Not a fan of the draft classes at all. I always download from 2k share the first 4 years. After that you are stuck with fictional classes off 2k share or CPU generated ones. As stated above, the ratings suck.

4. With player roles on, the player progression is solid. Give them more playing time and they get better in most cases. Some guys are going to be busts no matter what, but other times 2nd round picks turn out to be stars. It's fun that way.

So overall my main suggestions would be to fix the CPU GM logic and fix the player roles (assuming next season the 3 pt glitch is of course gone). Teams should be assigned roles such as rebuilding, shedding salary, title contenders, playoff participants, etc. that reflect in how they trade or sign free agents. Ratings for draft classes should be improved immensely. Player roles should be more forgiving and realistic and players should only lose massive ratings points if they are a star who is being benched or a top rookie pick who is not given a chance on a non-playoff team. As I always say, there are more Najera's than Iversons and McGradys in the NBA. If they fix the CPU GM logic and work onthe player role system and draft ratings, the association would be amazing. For now it's just merely a lot of fun, but a lot of work because I'm forced to run all 30 teams.

[Hassan Darkside]

Quote: Originally Posted by Pared

Guys, I want feedback from those heavily involved in running an Association. There are a few things I'd ask you guys answer, and being as specific as possible will benefit YOU in the long run. 1. What is your opinion of the mode over all? Does it offer what you would expect it to offer? 2. Simulating in an Association - how are the numbers from players overall? Are you seeing a good variance? Are you seeing - guys recover/not recover from injuries; young players become studs/busts; early/late retirements; player holdouts/trade requests; believable player stats? Please don't specific to one player (such as Chris Bosh is getting too many rebounds!). 3. Draft classes - what would you like to see added/changed to them? 4. Somewhat going into one area in more detail - player progression/regression: how is it working in your eyes? Looks good? Please, if you're going to make a claim that one thing should DEFINITELY be a certain way, please provide proof. Remember, everything you can offer here will directly impact NBA 2K11. Thanks fellas.

1.) Association mode is my favorite game mode in any sports game to date, minus CHoops 2k8s. However there always seems to be one or two things holding it back. This year it was the stupid post-patch 3pt glitch. For the past couple years it has been poor CPU management of teams, as Comduklakis said, the CPU stockpiles one position. CPU trade logic still seems unchanged from last year with players being traded back and forth and back again.

2.) I don't have that big of a problem with sim stats. They seem to be based not just on rating, but on teammates as well. For instance, Chris Bosh tends to lead the league in rebounds but it's usually because he doesn't have much help from other bigs on the team. I've also realized that team sliders play a factor in sim stats, using Vyaras's has improved some stats for me. The only gripe I have is that teams rarely win 60+ games, no matter how stacked they are.

3.) I think I would like to see Draft Classes work like CAPs do, instead of downloading an entire class from 2kshare (which should still stay an option), you should be able to download individual players if you want. You should also be able to practice or run NBA Blacktop games with the draft class players outside of Association mode.

4.) Haven't played long enough to give a fair assessment on this.
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This has been mentioned before, but I would like to see teams operate with a few different identities. Specifically championship contenders, rebuilding teams, and just contenders.

-Championship contenders should go through Association trying to add talent and upgrade weaker positions while retaining their core star players.

-Contenders' goals should be to make the playoffs and/or win a series. They should look to add veteran players or other role players that can add depth and experience.

-Rebuilding teams should either be looking to dump salaries or add talent. Older teams should look to get under the cap or draft replacements for their stars or make trades (a la Washington) to get a fresh start. Younger teams (such as Minnesota) should work on acquiring draft picks and young players.

All teams should go through this cycle, rebuilding teams eventually become contenders, contenders become championship contenders, championship contenders become rebuilding teams.
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Something else is current poor management of the cap. If you let the CPU control the Knicks, for instance, they have a ton of cap space yet waste it on underachieving role players instead of trying to hit the home run in free agency.

[Pared]

Great post. Please go into more detail about the draft classes. I'm trying to avoid comments like "the ratings suck" without there being detail behind them.

Are the generated rookies too lowly rated? Are there no specialists in given areas?

What would you like to see from CPU generated draft classes?

[BroMontana82]

1. What is your opinion of the mode over all? Does it offer what you would expect it to offer?

Overall, it's pretty good. Personally, I like everything in there feature wise. I just think a lot is way too broken because of the patch and from the original implementation.

2. Simulating in an Association - how are the numbers from players overall? Are you seeing a good variance? Are you seeing - guys recover/not recover from injuries; young players become studs/busts; early/late retirements; player holdouts/trade requests; believable player stats? Please don't specific to one player (such as Chris Bosh is getting too many rebounds!).

Overall, the stats are pretty good. The big obvious issue is the 3 pt. glitch where centers will shoot 100 a year.

Another huge issue that would fall under simulation is the CPU trading. It is terrible. A lot of trades aren't fair but I can get past that. Again, the HUGE issue after the patch is that turning off roles and chemistry and keeping CPU trades on creates an insane number of trades each month with players being traded numerous times, sometimes from one team to another multiple times. Basically you are forced to play Association mode with roles, chemistry, and CPU trades off now. This definitely limits the Association experience.

FA vs. D League problems. CPU teams will sign D Leaguers over players in the FA pool even though the FAs are better. They should look either to both or by a mix of overall, potential, etc.

Standings - the team standings can be a lot more accurate. I'm not really sure how 2k does this, but a lot of the good teams have bad records and bad teams are better than they should be. It should be as close to real life as possible with a few surprises thrown in. If it were up to me, I would do it based on a mixture of things like overall ratings, chemistry, and some sort of "last year's record" factor. The problem with the team ratings is that a team could have a solid overall rating, but still be putrid in real life...

3. Draft classes - what would you like to see added/changed to them?

I haven't used 2K's but I've seen them and based on their official rosters, these look ok. Maybe lower or more varied potential though. With 2k share, 2k can do whatever they want for draft classes since I always go with custom ones. But I think 2k's default potentials are insanely high.

4. Somewhat going into one area in more detail - player progression/regression: how is it working in your eyes? Looks good?

I honestly have only gone through 1 year so I can't comment. However, if you play with player roles off (to bypass the 3 pt glitch) Team Chemistry is ridiculously high for all teams which makes ratings inflated. What I would definitely change is the lay out and format. When players progress at the end of the year, all you see is OVERALL up or down, but not how much each individual attritube went up or down. This is incredibly annoying and frustrating. You can easily overlook something. What if a guy went up +1 but still, his medium shot or close shot went down by 7? How would you really know. You would definitely want to know. This really should be changed.


I think 2k REALLY needs to do better testing before release and before patch releases. The last patch really ruined the game for a lot of people because the only workarounds were turning off key elements of the mode. The massive issues from this year (all of which are listed above) need to be addressed. I know SimBaller is aware of them but I also know these things won't be fixed this year and I'm sure it's out of his hands so he can't address them. Roles, chemistry, and CPU trades really has to be looked at to see how each affects one another so there is no domino effect of glitches or the need turn off all of them to fix one glitch.

[Hassan Darkside]

Quote: Originally Posted by Pared

Great post. Please go into more detail about the draft classes. I'm trying to avoid comments like "the ratings suck" without there being detail behind them. Are the generated rookies too lowly rated? Are there no specialists in given areas? What would you like to see from CPU generated draft classes?

Ok, well I don't use generated draft classes, well I try not to anyway. But I think the devs need to take a page out of Madden's book and hand create the draft classes. I thought thats what I heard they did this year, but if they did, they didn't do a real good job. The main issues in the generated draft class always seem to be tendencies and signature style. You'll have Centers with say, LeBron's dunk package or Eddie House's signature shot.

All you gotta do is take one look at the Madden boards and the one thing the members consistently rave over is the draft classes. "I drafted so-and-so and he's like the second coming of John Elway. This is the best draft class ever! I got 5 guys with A potential!" I also feel like potential plays too much of a factor on the draft board. Let's take Cole Aldrich for instance. He's a 4 year Center coming out of KU, I'd say his potential isn't very high. But his rookie ratings should be somewhere around a 70+ or so. But that won't guarantee him a top 5 pick, it could push him into mid-to-late first round.
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Also, a note about the D-League, we should have the ability to use either randomly generated players or force the NBDL to fantasy draft from the free agent pool. I'm not a big fan of these random players.

[JBH3]

Quote: Originally Posted by Pared

1. What is your opinion of the mode over all? Does it offer what you would expect it to offer?

I give it 3 stars. It's the best franchise-type mode on the 360, but it could be better in so many ways. Will explain below...

Quote: Originally Posted by Pared

2. Simulating in an Association - how are the numbers from players overall? Are you seeing a good variance? Are you seeing - guys recover/not recover from injuries; young players become studs/busts; early/late retirements; player holdouts/trade requests; believable player stats? Please don't specific to one player (such as Chris Bosh is getting too many rebounds!).

The numbers are still off. Scoring and rebounding are better than in years past, but there's still typcially only one (maybe) two PGs avg'ing 10+ assists per game. Looking at this category today in the real NBA there are 4 players avg'ing 10 or more. I haven't been able to duplicate that and I'm in yr 3 of association.

Also - Blocks. You've got 6 real NBA players avg'ing 2/gm. In my association Dwight and Josh Smith avg two, and other shot blockers are in the high 1's.

Minutes - I am controlling all-30 teams and have set some guys to 38 or 40 minutes in the player rotations menu only to see them avg'ing 34, 36 tops. The lone 40 minute a night guy in my association is on my own team, Deron Williams. Otherwise, there's not enough guys playing 37 to 40 minutes a night when there are currently about 20 such guys in the real-NBA doing this.

Injuries - I like injuries, but 2K needs to be correct on the durability slider. With that set at 50 you don't see many injuries at all. With it set to 0, I translate that to be 0 durability, when in actuality it's backwards. The more you move to 100 the less durable players are. I also think there should be a specific aim in lowering a player's ratings for good post-torn acl, patella injury, etc. We see what happened to Arenas' quickness given his knee injuries, and there are other players who've suffered a significant injury like that and lost a "step". We need that simulated in the game.

Young Players/Busts - I think the only way I'm seeing busts simulated (w/ 3 association years down now) is at the time of drafting that player and revealing their true overall rating when they're rated much lower than the scouting would have indicated.

Early/Late Retirements - Haven't seen any early retirements. In fact I'm seeing guys hold on TOO long. I'm in year 3 and Shaq is still playing, Iverson is a free agent, and the only notable retirements have been Kidd (after yr 1) and Ray Allen (after yr 2).

Player holdouts/Trade Requests - Haven't seen a holdout. Does the CPU tell you a player is holding out via a message? Is there anyway to tell a player is holding out other than assuming he is because he is not accepting your offer due to not being interested in that amount of money?

Trade Requests - there are far too many due to player roles, and issues surrounding a player not getting the minutes they would want partly due to too many fouls (which shouldn't be my fault as the GM). If a player can't see their desired court time because of foul trouble than there unhappiness should be negated by their own failures to stay on the court.

Quote: Originally Posted by Pared

3. Draft classes - what would you like to see added/changed to them?

I would like to see player tendencies for rookie/cpu created players drastically improved. One would expect some of the top5 picks from yr to yr to start making their way, and bursting onto the scene but they can't unless you use one of them on your team because their tendencies are not comparable to their ratings. If 2K is going to give a guy a comparison when scouting that player then that player's tendencies should mirror that player-comparison or come close to it. Rather it seems the tendencies are just arbitrary numbers created by the CPU which have no merit to the players overall ratings.

I've had to copy down the tendencies of Lebron and a few other player "molds" by position and give these tendencies to rookies who enter the league so that they become legit players during simulation.

Quote: Originally Posted by Pared

4. Somewhat going into one area in more detail - player progression/regression: how is it working in your eyes? Looks good?

Progression - It's not. At least not dynamicly. Take for instance my 2nd season w/ the 76ers...Andre Igoudala went down for the year in early-JAN and I was using Louis Williams like a mad man. I ended up avg'ing 26/gm w/ him, and had multiple 40 pt efforts. However, he's only a 71 and I would think after a near-MVP season, and actually being in top5 in MVP votes for stretches of the season and taking home multiple player of the week and one player of the month award that I would see his rating jump to at least a 75. I even edited his potential to a 78, but it's yr 3 and he's still only a 71...this coming after doing shooting drills, and stealing drills to improve him in certain areas too.

Regression - This actually seems to be working pretty good. For instance, I traded Baron Davis to the Pacers in yr 2. He was an 84. Now into year 3 and he's taken a huge regression and the 84 rated PG in 2010-11 is now a 79 in 2011-12. That's a very cool aspect that I like.

[Pared]

Quote: Originally Posted by JBH3

The numbers are still off. Scoring and rebounding are better than in years past, but there's still typcially only one (maybe) two PGs avg'ing 10+ assists per game. Looking at this category today in the real NBA there are 4 players avg'ing 10 or more. I haven't been able to duplicate that and I'm in yr 3 of association. Also - Blocks. You've got 6 real NBA players avg'ing 2/gm. In my association Dwight and Josh Smith avg two, and other shot blockers are in the high 1's.

This sort of thing is what I'm looking for. Adding stats from the last few years to prove your point would help as well.

Thanks guys.