TCB/TPB

[fenrrris]

Trying to decide which I'd rather buy. I've played both demos, but only briefly. Anyone have any thoughts? I like the NBA a heck of a lot more than I like college basketball. Is TCB a newer game? Is there any outstanding reason that I'm missing to go for one game over the other?

[miami_fan]

TCB is newer. I have them both and play them both constantly

[MizzouRah]

If you like the NBA better than the college game (I'm the opposite) then I would get TPB.

Heck, I've even played it a TON and I'm not a big NBA fan. :)

[ThunderingHERD]

I'd prefer a good college bball sim to a good pro sim, but I think I had a lot more fun with TPB than TCB.

[amdaily]

Only played the demo for TCB and didn't like it. Don't like college ball either though. On the other hand, TPB is great.

[Galaril]

I would go with the Pro game. It seems l;ike it handles the depth charts and rosters much better on both you rown team and the AI teams. The college game is great exccept the roster management is kind of screwy . This is the area I hope Gary, if you are listening focus on in the next version.

[Critch]

I'm not a fan of either college or pro basketball, but I bought both games for some reason. I had a squillion times more fun with TPB than I had with TCB.

Not sure if that's a recommendation or not :)

[ScottVib]

I had more fun with TCB... but I much prefer college hoops to pro hoops in real life.

[Gary Gorski]

The college game is great exccept the roster management is kind of screwy . This is the area I hope Gary, if you are listening focus on in the next version.

I'm always listening :)

Obviously since the college game is newer the next basketball game I do will be a new pro one but I'd still like to know what in particular you don't like about the roster management in TCB. Might even help as I prepare for a new pro game.

[John Galt]

Well, this thread got me to try TPB again, but now I remember why I put it down. It was fun for a while, but there are some defects that make the game not too much fun to me. Since Gary's reading, I guess I'll just post them here.

Interface problems:

1) The lack of "stickies" or defaults to certain screens is a pain in the butt. The biggest problem is during free agency. If you want to target SF's, you de-select PG, SG, PF, and C. Then you go to stats (it defaults to ratings, but there is no single "rating" that makes sense to sort SF's). Then you sort by MPG or whatever stat floats your boat. You then go down to the player you want, click on "make offer." There are no "default" demands from the player (he says what he basically wants, but you have to fill in all the numbers - although the generate contract is nice). So, you type up the contract and then make an offer. You then exit that player's screen. Then you hit "advance one day." You notice that the player didn't accept your offer (but only by looking at whether your remaining money changed). At this point, everything is unstickied. So, you have to go through the whole process again (starting by deselecting PF, C, PG, SG, etc.). Since free agency goes on for a while and most of the early days have no acceptances, this makes for a very tedious time, IMO.

2) Free agency should offer you more ways to view players. I think /48 min stats would be especially important for finding underutilized players who have great potential.

3) There should be an option to "sim until trade deadline."

4) Generally, there is a lot of wasted space on many screens. This is a general problem with the .400 studies/GDS games. I think a little more efficiency and consolidation under the Wolverine regime would be better.

AI Problems

1) No one else stores cap cash well. It is too easy to win the game by giving up on a season or two, then giving max offers to the best players and pairing them with your top draft picks. Other teams don't do the same thing so you really just compete with their original team when trying to sign any free agent. I think this is generally a problem with every team only planning for the short team (in the real world, not every team is run by Isiah).

2) The trade AI is tough, but also unrealistic. It seems way too hard to get some team's first round picks (this is may be for a reason I discuss below in player progression). From the recent draft, we saw Telfair and Battier fetch high draft picks in a weak draft. I would like an AI that made similar decisions. I like that the game doesn't take over-the-hill veterans for top draft picks, but I think it should be more inclined to take young players or players entering their prime for high draft picks. Another way the trade AI is a bit unrealistic is that it doesn't allow teams to dump contracts. At first glance, this sounds like a good idea. But I've tried to dump someone like Joey Graham with the Raptors (4 year deal at about 2.5 million per, I think) by pairing him with better players or draft picks. While I think Graham should be a net negative on the deal, I don't think any trade that includes him should be rejected out-of-hand (which is how the AI does it now). Graham's contract isn't so onerous that a team like the Knicks (who is well over the cap) should fear adding it if they were otherwise getting great value on the deal. Lastly, I think the trade AI overvalues superstars on the trade block. I know this is prone to obvious player exploits, but I think the AI needs to be willing to shed disgruntled players for combinations of top draft picks and young players. I saw Hinrich was on the trade block in a future season (making 10 million per), so I offered some combination of Felton, Kwame Brown, and 1st round picks. Even though value definitely favored the Bulls, the trade was rejected because I didn't come close to matching the best thing the Bulls had to offer. While I think the AI was designed well to prevent obvious exploits, I think it needs realistic refinement in the next version.

3) Bad contract demands and signings. Yeah, the real NBA is filled with bad contracts, but I think they are based on misperceiving potential (or a fluke year). In TPB, it seems like every average player wants too much money. I think this has to do with the player distribution problem I describe below.

Player Progression:

1) Very few flops. High draft picks do fail, but you generally know so right after the draft. The failure is in the original scouting. But any player with 4 or 5 star potential will often live up to that with enough playing time. I think this is why teams value 1st round picks too much in trading. They generally produce very good value.

2) Too much of a curve distribution of talent. As with other sports, the distribution of talent shouldn't be a true bell curve - it should be the leading edge of that curve (because the bell curve actually exists in the general population and professional athletes are the front edge of that curve). It's too easy to get a bunch of 3 or 3 1/2 star players to round out your roster.

3) Too much known potential. I would think it would be better if younger and international players had much higher potential as they are essentially unknown. Right now, potential is too much of a known commodity. This seems especially problematic during the draft. In the real draft, everyone has tons of "upside." In TPB, most draftees seem boring.

Features Missing:

1) Sign and trades.

2) Ease of creating fictional player universes.


With all of that being said, I did enjoy the game. It just didn't have a lot of lasting appeal (few games do). I do definitely look forward to checking out the next version (because the core of the game is solid). Hopefully, the interface will improve (I think the college game is actually worse because the recruiting screens are highly inefficient) and the AI/Player progression problems will be fixed.

[jbmagic]

John Galt you meant TPB (Total Pro Basketball) not TCB right?

[John Galt]

John Galt you meant TPB (Total Pro Basketball) not TCB right?

oops. You are right. I'll edit the post now.

[ScottVib]

Features Missing:
2) Ease of creating fictional player universes.

This is probably the #1 thing that keeps me from enjoying the game as much.

[John Galt]

This is probably the #1 thing that keeps me from enjoying the game as much.

Truthfully, it doesn't matter to me at all (I rarely like starting a game with a purely fictional league), but I know it matters to a lot of people here.

[Gary Gorski]

First, thank you JG for taking the time to post all this. You could have stopped after the second sentence but it wouldn't have made the game any better. Ok, here's a few comments from me.

Interface problems:

1) you have to go through the whole process again (starting by deselecting PF, C, PG, SG, etc.). Since free agency goes on for a while and most of the early days have no acceptances, this makes for a very tedious time, IMO.

2) Free agency should offer you more ways to view players. I think /48 min stats would be especially important for finding underutilized players who have great potential.

3) There should be an option to "sim until trade deadline."

4) Generally, there is a lot of wasted space on many screens. This is a general problem with the .400 studies/GDS games. I think a little more efficiency and consolidation under the Wolverine regime would be better.

The interface is definitely one area we're going to look at. Paul does a tremendous job making everything nice to look at but I did a poor job in some areas with screen space layout. There's a few other areas that are kind of tedious to do things as well and I'll be improving those as well.

AI Problems

1) No one else stores cap cash well. It is too easy to win the game by giving up on a season or two, then giving max offers to the best players and pairing them with your top draft picks. Other teams don't do the same thing so you really just compete with their original team when trying to sign any free agent. I think this is generally a problem with every team only planning for the short team (in the real world, not every team is run by Isiah).

LOL, well I would have to say the AI is better at team building than Isiah - give me that much at least. That said though I agree there can be improvements in this area.

2) The trade AI is tough, but also unrealistic. It seems way too hard to get some team's first round picks (this is may be for a reason I discuss below in player progression). From the recent draft, we saw Telfair and Battier fetch high draft picks in a weak draft. I would like an AI that made similar decisions. I like that the game doesn't take over-the-hill veterans for top draft picks, but I think it should be more inclined to take young players or players entering their prime for high draft picks. Another way the trade AI is a bit unrealistic is that it doesn't allow teams to dump contracts. At first glance, this sounds like a good idea. But I've tried to dump someone like Joey Graham with the Raptors (4 year deal at about 2.5 million per, I think) by pairing him with better players or draft picks. While I think Graham should be a net negative on the deal, I don't think any trade that includes him should be rejected out-of-hand (which is how the AI does it now). Graham's contract isn't so onerous that a team like the Knicks (who is well over the cap) should fear adding it if they were otherwise getting great value on the deal. Lastly, I think the trade AI overvalues superstars on the trade block. I know this is prone to obvious player exploits, but I think the AI needs to be willing to shed disgruntled players for combinations of top draft picks and young players. I saw Hinrich was on the trade block in a future season (making 10 million per), so I offered some combination of Felton, Kwame Brown, and 1st round picks. Even though value definitely favored the Bulls, the trade was rejected because I didn't come close to matching the best thing the Bulls had to offer. While I think the AI was designed well to prevent obvious exploits, I think it needs realistic refinement in the next version.

Ok, the trade AI is the thing I'm the most proud of in the game and I think it fares as well or better than any other sports game out there. In regards to trading for first round picks I think it values them pretty well plus if Im going to error on that its going to be on the side of overvaluing them just for the reason you stated above - I don't want you to be able to just dump your team for a bunch of first rounders.

Regarding taking young players for high picks it will if you're giving the AI something worth it. Remember, a team knows the value of the player you are offering and has an estimation of how good that player can be whereas with the draft pick its value is unknown. If you're gonna offer LeBron, Melo, Wade, Bosh etc you'd get a high draft pick easily - but a Joey Graham isn't worth a high pick and if he's not a guy who's ever going to get off the bench he's probably not worth tying up 2.5 million for 4 years for any pick.

Re the Hinrich for Felton, Brown and 1st round picks obviously you said its in the future so I can't really evaluate it but if Hinrich is an all-star and the Bulls are a competitive team then why do they want to make that deal? Assuming that Felton nor Brown developed into much since the game was telling you that it wasn't getting a player close to Hinrich back I don't see a reason for the Bulls to make that trade unless your team was really bad and your draft picks would have been very high and the Bulls needed to rebuild.

3) Bad contract demands and signings. Yeah, the real NBA is filled with bad contracts, but I think they are based on misperceiving potential (or a fluke year). In TPB, it seems like every average player wants too much money. I think this has to do with the player distribution problem I describe below.

This is modeled similarily - teams take into consideration last season's stats in addition to the player's perceived skill, depth of talent in the FA pool and each team's own roster.

Player Progression:

1) Very few flops. High draft picks do fail, but you generally know so right after the draft. The failure is in the original scouting. But any player with 4 or 5 star potential will often live up to that with enough playing time. I think this is why teams value 1st round picks too much in trading. They generally produce very good value.

You actually don't know after the draft - you only see your view of his skills, not the true value of him. In addition to that player development is not linear - they can make quick jumps in their first couple of years in the league.

Features Missing:

1) Sign and trades.

2) Ease of creating fictional player universes.

#2 will be taken care of - I don't know about #1 just because of the added difficulty with the trade AI. Something I will keep in mind though.

[John Galt]

First, thank you JG for taking the time to post all this. You could have stopped after the second sentence but it wouldn't have made the game any better. Ok, here's a few comments from me.



The interface is definitely one area we're going to look at. Paul does a tremendous job making everything nice to look at but I did a poor job in some areas with screen space layout. There's a few other areas that are kind of tedious to do things as well and I'll be improving those as well.



LOL, well I would have to say the AI is better at team building than Isiah - give me that much at least. That said though I agree there can be improvements in this area.



Ok, the trade AI is the thing I'm the most proud of in the game and I think it fares as well or better than any other sports game out there. In regards to trading for first round picks I think it values them pretty well plus if Im going to error on that its going to be on the side of overvaluing them just for the reason you stated above - I don't want you to be able to just dump your team for a bunch of first rounders.

Regarding taking young players for high picks it will if you're giving the AI something worth it. Remember, a team knows the value of the player you are offering and has an estimation of how good that player can be whereas with the draft pick its value is unknown. If you're gonna offer LeBron, Melo, Wade, Bosh etc you'd get a high draft pick easily - but a Joey Graham isn't worth a high pick and if he's not a guy who's ever going to get off the bench he's probably not worth tying up 2.5 million for 4 years for any pick.

Re the Hinrich for Felton, Brown and 1st round picks obviously you said its in the future so I can't really evaluate it but if Hinrich is an all-star and the Bulls are a competitive team then why do they want to make that deal? Assuming that Felton nor Brown developed into much since the game was telling you that it wasn't getting a player close to Hinrich back I don't see a reason for the Bulls to make that trade unless your team was really bad and your draft picks would have been very high and the Bulls needed to rebuild.



This is modeled similarily - teams take into consideration last season's stats in addition to the player's perceived skill, depth of talent in the FA pool and each team's own roster.



You actually don't know after the draft - you only see your view of his skills, not the true value of him. In addition to that player development is not linear - they can make quick jumps in their first couple of years in the league.



#2 will be taken care of - I don't know about #1 just because of the added difficulty with the trade AI. Something I will keep in mind though.

If I didn't make it clear the first time, I do think TPB is a great first effort and I appreciate you making the effort to do things right. With that said, I have a few replies to your last post.

First, as to the interface. After my last post, I tried to think of particular areas where consolidating screens would make sense. Since I don't have the game in front of me, I'm doing this from memory. It seemed to me that the draft screens of team scouting and league scouting should be put together. In free agency, I think you should be able to make your offer from the player card (instead of closing it and then opening the make offer screen). I'm sure there are others, but I generally think most text sim developers do better when they ask the question, "is there anyway for me to get rid of this menu or screen?" Another interface issue I thought of was giving a different default (or user option) for the screen after a night's games. I really don't care about who was good on a particular night and would rather just go to the standings page as a default. Giving the user that option would be nice. I also think some pages like the rumors page are a mess. All of that info could be displayed in a consolidated screen without so many line breaks and scrolling.

Second, as to the trade AI, as I said, I think you are right that it is very good because it is tough on the user. However, I think there are areas where it could be better. The real-world examples of Telfair and Battier occurred this year because this was a super WEAK draft. The same thing wouldn't happen every year. I think making the AI aware of the strength of the draft in evaluating picks would be helpful (obviously this can't be done more than a year in the future). As for my Hinrich example, the key for me was that he was a disgruntled player on the trading block. Under normal conditions, my offer probably would be a close call. But as it turned out, Hinrich was never dealt because I'm sure no one could meet there high demands. I think it is very good for the trade AI to massively overvalue superstars, but I think rather than being an absolute veto (meaning you can really only trade superstars for superstars), it should just be a very strong factor that can still be overcome. I've noticed that the disgruntled superstars don't get dealt that often because they can't find trade partners and I think that is a problem. As for the Graham trade offers, my point was that you should be able to unload bad contracts with very good ones. If I offer Bosh + Graham for a decent player, the AI shouldn't say "we won't accept the contract of Graham." This is just the reality of today's NBA. So many trades pair a bad contract with a good contract (or draft picks) to meet the salary cap or luxury tax threshold. TPB effectively blocks those types of trades.

Third, as for the "very few flops," you are right that you don't have a perfect picture. I think my problem here is really just a specific formation of the "bell curve" problem. Too many 1st round picks are average to above average. Instead, I think there should be many who could become stars or superstars (but have low current ratings), but a lot who won't amount to anything.

Fourth, the lack of sign-and-trades does seem to be a big problem especially if teams aren't good at hording cap cash. I'm sure it is difficult to program but it really compounds the easiest way to win in TPB (tube a couple years, sign all the best free agents, have an instant dynasty). Sign and trades would certainly help to overcome that problem.

A couple other random things I thought of. I hope you continue to improve the draft commentary. It's a fun part of the game although it is kind of goofy at times. One of my favorite goofs is when the commentator says the last pick on the draft would still have been available later (or it was a reach to draft him). I also think the financial part of the game is kind of a waste right now. There really isn't a lot of guidance or point to it. I think you might be better off eliminating it (since the NBA is a salary cap league) or changing it to be in the form of owner demands (ie don't hit the luxury tax threshold ala FM).

Anyway, those are my thoughts for now. Because I once tinkered with writing a basketball sim many years ago, I take special interests in simulations of the sport. So, if you are looking for beta-testers, I'd love to help out.

[Gary Gorski]

As for the Graham trade offers, my point was that you should be able to unload bad contracts with very good ones. If I offer Bosh + Graham for a decent player, the AI shouldn't say "we won't accept the contract of Graham." This is just the reality of today's NBA. So many trades pair a bad contract with a good contract (or draft picks) to meet the salary cap or luxury tax threshold. TPB effectively blocks those types of trades.

That you are right on - the trade AI is too rigid in cases where it would be a huge benefit to the team. One case is the rejection of a superstar for peanuts because he's accompanied with a bad contract the other is where both teams are trading a bad contract but the AI's is worse to start with. Now that I can go back and tweak it I hope to be able to loosen it up there - obviously the first time I rathered it be too defensive. Basically the AI is programmed to think you're going to rip it off so if bad things a,b,c or d happen then it won't make the deal.

I also think the financial part of the game is kind of a waste right now. There really isn't a lot of guidance or point to it. I think you might be better off eliminating it (since the NBA is a salary cap league) or changing it to be in the form of owner demands (ie don't hit the luxury tax threshold ala FM).

I very much agree and its in my initial notes to remove user control over any of this stuff. The finances will still be in the game but it will be all handled by the AI in terms of ticket prices and stuff like that. General Managers don't do that kind of stuff anyways.

Anyway, those are my thoughts for now. Because I once tinkered with writing a basketball sim many years ago, I take special interests in simulations of the sport. So, if you are looking for beta-testers, I'd love to help out.

Thanks, I appreciate the feedback - whenever I get around to getting a beta form on the site sign up for it or send me an email/PM shortly after whenever the game is announced.

[Galaril]

I'm always listening :)

Obviously since the college game is newer the next basketball game I do will be a new pro one but I'd still like to know what in particular you don't like about the roster management in TCB. Might even help as I prepare for a new pro game.


This is related to TCB but it could possibly relate to TPB as well. I was lazy and used others suggestions and some of my own to give some insight into what I meant.
1. The sub matrix is important to get guys the right amount of minutes and to try and manage who is on the court together, but it's a headache to fine tune your sub matrix and then know that even the slightest adjustment to the depth chart will undo everything. There has to be a better way to implement this.
2. Maybe add a shortcut to repeat placement of a player's name. If I'm subbing a guy in for more than two minutes at a time, I have to drag and drop for every two minute segment. A more user-friendly sub matrix would probably eliminate the need for the depth chart. The depth chart seems to be a bit redundant IMHO.
3. Most of us who have been simming the majority of our games since release rely very heavily on the matrix to set the playing time and sub patterns. Without a way to lock it -- or at least an intelligent system that doesn't reset all 5 matrix positions just because you redshirted a guy who didn't have any minutes assigned in the first place -- it becomes very frustrating.

There are still a number of minor issues with TCB, but this one I would call "major" and it has never been addressed.

[Gary Gorski]

This is related to TCB but it could possibly relate to TPB as well. I was lazy and used others suggestions and some of my own to give some insight into what I meant.
1. The sub matrix is important to get guys the right amount of minutes and to try and manage who is on the court together, but it's a headache to fine tune your sub matrix and then know that even the slightest adjustment to the depth chart will undo everything. There has to be a better way to implement this.
2. Maybe add a shortcut to repeat placement of a player's name. If I'm subbing a guy in for more than two minutes at a time, I have to drag and drop for every two minute segment. A more user-friendly sub matrix would probably eliminate the need for the depth chart. The depth chart seems to be a bit redundant IMHO.
3. Most of us who have been simming the majority of our games since release rely very heavily on the matrix to set the playing time and sub patterns. Without a way to lock it -- or at least an intelligent system that doesn't reset all 5 matrix positions just because you redshirted a guy who didn't have any minutes assigned in the first place -- it becomes very frustrating.

There are still a number of minor issues with TCB, but this one I would call "major" and it has never been addressed.

This area is under heavy discussion inside the walls of Wolverine Studios right now and there's going to be some changes made to how this is all implemented. The biggest annoyance is what you pointed out - when you change the depth chart the entire matrix updates. We'll probably make it a choice to automatically update it or not because some people do find it easier just to set their depth chart and let the AI decide the best use of players.

The depth chart isn't redundant because it serves its own purpose. The game uses the matrix as a guideline to who should be in at any time. However if certain conditions aren't met (foul trouble, fatigue etc) then the AI needs to deviate from the matrix and looks to your depth chart in order to find who you have classified as the best available replacement.

[MizzouRah]

some people do find it easier just to set their depth chart and let the AI decide the best use of players

:)