DDS: Pro Basketball 2 Update

[Gary Gorski]

Just wanted to poke my head in here and give a quick update. The game is very stable, only one or two crashes reported recently so I'm fixing those up and then going to take a little time to add in some new suggestions, clean up some graphics, tweak/update the roster file a little and it will be released.

In the meantime there's a couple items I wanted to share. First there is a great beta dynasty going on by Izulde and you can find his FOFC thread here (http://www.operationsports.com/fofc/showthread.php?t=78837).

Second, one of the beta users posted an interesting thing that I have never seen happen before and I thought I would share with you. I've spent a great deal of time on the "personality" aspect of the game and plan to go even deeper with some new ideas/updates but here's what he saw happen.

Meet Heath Tennell...basketball superstar and apparent psycho nutcase

Think Ron Artest if he was an MVP caliber player. Easily the best SG in the league (4.5 stars). Consistently averages 23 points (league leading, FYI), 4 assists, 4 rebounds, 2 steals and 3 blocks. He's now 35 years old (in 2045)... a 10 time allstar. A former MVP. All-League 11 teams. All Defense 7 times. 4 time champion...

Allow me a minute to tell you the bizarre story of Heath Tennell's career.

NOTE: His personality is "disruptive".

2029 - He's drafted 3rd by the Kings.
2032 - He's traded to the Mavericks. Spends one season there and WINS THE MVP AWARD.
2033 - After his one MVP season in Dallas, he decides to sign as a free agent with my Bulls team for 5 years.
2036 - Helps Bulls win Championship
2037 - Helps Bulls Repeat as Champions
2038 - After winning two titles with my Bulls, Heath decides decides, "See ya Chicago! I miss being MVP of the league" and decides to go back to the Mavericks (the team he dissed to sign with me in the first place). Welcome back to Dallas, Heath. He signs for 5 years 68 million. Passing up a 6 year 110 million dollar contract to stay in Chicago. I kind of had to respect it, though. That Chicago team was a super-team. He obviously wanted to prove he could do it on his own.
2040 - 20 Games into his 3rd season in Dallas, he gets traded for a poo-poo platter to the Bucks.
2041 - His 2nd season with the Bucks after 51 games, (despite having the best record in the NBA) the Bucks decide to ship him to San Antonio (the best record in the West) for a lesser player. He spends the next 28 games with the Spurs... wins a the Championship.
2042 - Helps the Spurs Repeat as Champions... defeating his former Chicago team in the Finals. What a jerk.
2043 - Despite again winning two titles in a row with a 2nd team... free agency hits and Heath decides, "See Ya San Antonio!... I'm going back to the Bucks!" and signs a 3 year contract with the team who sent him to San Antonio. 3 years 20 million.
2044 - After a brilliant season on the Bucks where he was 1st team All NBA and 1st team all-defense... falling short in the ECF against my Chicago super-team.... 11 games in to the 2044 season, the Bucks trade Heath to the Raptors for a lesser player.
2045 - Despite only spending 71 games with the Raptors (again all-league 1st team... All defense 2nd team. All-star starter)... before the 2045 season, the Raptors trade Heath to the New Jersey Nets for a lesser player. Heath actually makes it through the entire season playing with the Nets. He helps lead them to the playoffs for the first time in 5 years... winning 46 games and losing in the 1st round. He makes all-league 3rd team.
2046 - The Atlanta Hawks make a MAJOR splash in the summer of 2046. The Hawks haven't won more than 35 games in any of the last 3 seasons. However, they end up signing the two biggest free agents of the year (a PF and SF... both 5 star players). After witnessing this... I was crossing my fingers that they would also add the aging Heath Tennell (now 36). The Hawks seemed to have a big gap at SG... Tennell would be a perfect fit. Maybe one more run at a championship. I really wanted Atlanta to do this. However... for whatever reason... NOBODY signs Heath Tennell. The entire free agency period comes and goes. Either nobody wanted to sign him... or Heath refused to sign anywhere. Training camp comes and goes. The D-League draft comes and goes. Still Heath has no team. Granted, he's old now... but he's coming off a season where he was 3rd team All-League and he's still a 3.5 star player.

Two games into the 2046 season... none other than the Atlanta Hawks sign Heath for the minimum! Yes! Perfect fit. I was actually glad to see a rival GM pull that off. Over the next 14 games the Hawks come out flaming hot.... with the old Heath Tennell leading the way averaging 20.6 points, 4.6 rebounds, 2.1 steals and 2.7 blocks on 48% shooting. However... after only 14 games... the Hawks trade Heath to the Clippers.

Heath spends the remainder of the season with the Clippers... leads them to the 2nd round of the playoffs. Notes: The Nets (who Heath lead to 46 wins last year) end up winning 19 games without him. The Hawks (who had Heath for the first 14 games of the season) end up winning 60 games and falling short in the playoffs.

The text is quoted from the user who experienced this but I thought this was awesome to see something like this happen. Every team got burned out on this guy yet because he was so uber-talented they would take him on again for the Ws until they couldn't stand him anymore. It was just really exciting for me to see the personality side of the game come through like this and even though its wild and we will probably never see anything like it I still thought it was an amazing story to have played through.

Frankly I think the new personality interactions (and the even more additions to come there) along with some of the new features (like RFA, the playable Euro leagues with the promotion/relegation cup system..) have really taken the game to new heights and I hope you'll at least give the demo a run when its ready.

[molson]

Looks promising. Looking forward to firing up an expansion team of my own.

Are all those Heath Tennell trades attitude-related? Is that documented in the game somehow? How does that manfiest itself - how does the Tennell/team situation inevitably "implode"? Do things start out OK but then deteriorate, or does his volatile attitude just increase his trade frequency generally?

Either way, that's a great text sim advancement (I'm not going to call it a "feature", because that's way deeper and more awesome than the "features" text sims too often slap on a product - causing me to despise that word in a tex sim context.).

[jbergey22]

Great story Gary.

The only think that slightly scares me is the 3 blocks per game at shooting guard. I know in past version a lot of smaller players were getting a lot of blocks per game so I hope this is a rarity because I really doubt any shooting guard will average 3 blocks per game. Even a talented player like Kobe Bryant doesnt even get 1 block per game. Dwayne Wade and Lebron James each averaging more than 1.5 is more the exception not the rule.

[Gary Gorski]

Yes those are all attitude related - right now what happens is similar to what happens in the college game. You get an email stating so and so and Tennell got into an argument or a fight and you can use the phone to talk to the players and try to get them to calm down and for some players they will chill out and other guys will...well they will be like Heath here. On top of that if you have someone really disruptive then everyone's morale just goes down over time because of the day to day grind of dealing with a guy like this. Sometimes you can change the problem guy by either talking to him or getting rid of the guy he gets into the fights with but if he gets into fights with everyone then he's pretty much the problem :)

Eventually you have to do something - he will demand a trade cause he's pissed off, the rest of the team is pissed off...its just becomes a disaster if you don't tend to it. I'm working on even more interaction for this type of stuff as well and I look forward to giving you even more choices to make along this kind of line and in dealing with media issues and the like.

[molson]

Yes those are all attitude related - right now what happens is similar to what happens in the college game. You get an email stating so and so and Tennell got into an argument or a fight and you can use the phone to talk to the players and try to get them to calm down and for some players they will chill out and other guys will...well they will be like Heath here. On top of that if you have someone really disruptive then everyone's morale just goes down over time because of the day to day grind of dealing with a guy like this. Sometimes you can change the problem guy by either talking to him or getting rid of the guy he gets into the fights with but if he gets into fights with everyone then he's pretty much the problem :)

Eventually you have to do something - he will demand a trade cause he's pissed off, the rest of the team is pissed off...its just becomes a disaster if you don't tend to it. I'm working on even more interaction for this type of stuff as well and I look forward to giving you even more choices to make along this kind of line and in dealing with media issues and the like.

That's awesome. Exactly where text sims need to go. I'm warming up my credit card.

[Gary Gorski]

Great story Gary.

The only think that slightly scares me is the 3 blocks per game at shooting guard. I know in past version a lot of smaller players were getting a lot of blocks per game so I hope this is a rarity because I really doubt any shooting guard will average 3 blocks per game. Even a talented player like Kobe Bryant doesnt even get 1 block per game. Dwayne Wade and Lebron James each averaging more than 1.5 is more the exception not the rule.

True and I don't know whether he was a tall SG (like if Durant was to play SG) or just has a freak ability to block shots - the user didn't say. I do have it on my list to turn down blocks for guards in general as a tweak that is needed so I'm sure the amount he is averaging will not happen again but it was just a fantastic story about what the personality side of the game contains now.

[jetpunk2000]

I bought it the other day and it's good stuff. Needs a little tweaking in certain areas but it's a solid game and definitely stable.

[vex]

23PPG as the league leader is VERY low. In fact, that would be the lowest in the NBA since 1954.

[Gary Gorski]

23PPG as the league leader is VERY low. In fact, that would be the lowest in the NBA since 1954.

I've experimented alot with player valuations in the beta builds to distinguish players better and in redoing that there are still parts of the code that needs to be tweaked in order to accommodate the way players are viewed now - one of those areas is MPG played which is low across the board as of the last build which is accounting for such a low PPG leader.

Essentially players "1-5 star" values have been lowered almost across the board to differentiate what a 5 star player truly is in a historical context so the game needs to give more minutes to what it now sees as 3 and 4 star players when it used to reserve those minutes for what it previously viewed as 4 and 5 star players. Hope that makes sense.

[Capital]

Gary,

I have not purchased the game yet, but will be. I'm very much looking forward to this game.

By any chance, did you get a chance to add a save feature to the depth chart and submatrix? One of my frustrations in the first version is that an injury happens that forces a change to the depth chart and matrix and then have to undo the change when the player returns. It would be nice to have a restore save feature. Any chance?

BTW - the beta dynasties have been a great read.

[Gary Gorski]

Yes there is now a save feature on the matrix so that you can lock in your "normal" rotation, change it for injury and click one button to reset it back to normal. You do have to change the depth chart manually when needed but that's one drag and drop unlike the multiple ones needed to change the sub matrix.

[Capital]

The sub matrix was the big issue. Thanks Gary...looking forward to the game.

[Gary Gorski]

No problem - I'm always willing to try and add things people specifically request if at all possible and especially if they make the game better which this suggestion certainly did because its much easier to manage the matrix now.

[vex]

When will a demo be released approximately?

[vex]

I've experimented alot with player valuations in the beta builds to distinguish players better and in redoing that there are still parts of the code that needs to be tweaked in order to accommodate the way players are viewed now - one of those areas is MPG played which is low across the board as of the last build which is accounting for such a low PPG leader.

Essentially players "1-5 star" values have been lowered almost across the board to differentiate what a 5 star player truly is in a historical context so the game needs to give more minutes to what it now sees as 3 and 4 star players when it used to reserve those minutes for what it previously viewed as 4 and 5 star players. Hope that makes sense.

I see, thanks for clearing that up. How many 5 star players are set to be active in a league at a time assuming they reach potential? Or is that entirely random?

[whomario]

@ Gary : There´s too many "Heath Tennells" in the game right now as in the "personality" rating is very low for too many good created players. Maybe acount for that more via work ethic, loyalty and others rather than the personality ?

The shot blocking for guards and forwards definitely need toning down, i posted a topic with some data on the WS board as well.
Also, rebounds are too low for forwards still (also guards might need a small bumb up) and shooting percentages for created players need tweeking still.

@ vex : It´s random as the ranking isn´t "fluid" but takes into acount the actual skills only, if you happen to have a couple strong draft classes in a row you´ll see more 5 stars 3,4 years down the road as when you´d get a couple weak classes.