Alright boyz, here we go!!! Draft Day Sports: Pro Basketball 2 First Impressions

[Gary Gorski]

Originally Posted by DaddyTorgo

I'm sure Troy and Gary already had this type of discussion, but the more things like that, that "push" to you that the universe is going on and evolving outside of the team you are controlling, is one of the keys to that whole side of "immersion" (which this game has made some strides in already - at least as far as i can tell from the demo). I think ultimately what may need to happen though is the addition of a different "source" for this type of thing in Gary's game, separate from the magazines, which seem more "static" and "point in time" as opposed to dynamic and evolving/pushing (not that that's a bad thing - the magazines definitely serve their purpose). But a "newspaper" type feature that would update weekly (similar to how Shaun had it in PureSim for example) is probably what I presume the end goal that Gary would desire would be. The emails pushed to users though would be (i presume) the relatively quicker & easier type solution to this.

The other side of the demo (and the side where a lot more strides seem to have been made) is with player personalities and their interactions with you the user and other players. Again, as far as I can tell from the demo so far - huge strides made here.

But - to be clear- I'm not saying any of this ought to be done now or anything. I'd still buy the game without them (or I will...not I would). Just talking "bigger picture" about this stuff - although I recognize that I'm stupid and I should have gotten involved in the process earlier and had these conversations with Gary and all.

You're hitting on a subject that Bill Harris and I have talked about many times and its the "push" aspect - feel free to expand upon the idea and definitely if it can make the game better I will try to add it.

[DaddyTorgo]

Originally Posted by Gary Gorski

You're hitting on a subject that Bill Harris and I have talked about many times and its the "push" aspect - feel free to expand upon the idea and definitely if it can make the game better I will try to add it.

Certainly there's a balancing aspect between how much you push - you can't push EVERYTHING.

That's why in the case of say FM they created a separate "news" section featuring news from around the league/world and then an Inbox for news pertaining to your team. So you can pick & choose how much to be immersed into it.

Strangely, they've admitted that was somewhat of a misstep on their part I guess, and are going back to merging everything together (although with powerful filtering abilities I guess?).

I suppose that really is the best of both worlds. "Push" all the info to the player (emails about his own team & players, emails about league occurences and former players, notable players (above a certain * level maybe?), milestones, etc., but give the user the ability to filter what they want to be displayed - so if I don't want to see all the league news I can just filter it out and it won't be displayed - that way I don't have to scroll through it all to find what I do want to see.

From the perspective of the gamer, more information about the surrounding universe of the game immerses the player in it. It makes decision-making take on a more organic quality, and also leads I think to that holy grail that game designers want - players spending time away from the game but thinking about the game.

I can't tell you how many hours of my non FM-playing time I spend thinking about my players in FM, but it's a lot. Thinking about potential transfer targets who I've been keeping an eye on and how they'd fit into my team, etc.

Pushing the information to the user (because the info is all there in your games - there's a huge degree of history and information on current seasons, past seasons, etc.) makes that information processing more subconscious and also I think makes it more prone to "real" decisions (decisions based on emotion and feelings rather than strictly analytical).

I felt that DDSPB was actually pretty good at this although it didn't push a lot - I torpedoed my successful Celtics team in part because I stayed loyal to a guy I drafted in the Top 5 even when he started to go over-the-hill.

I'm not really sure how to explain it other than to say that in our daily lives we "consume" a lot of information that is pushed at us...so when a game takes this approach the pathways of the mind are...already greased and ready to accept the info, so it flows in easier? If that even makes any sense.

Anyways - far too long a post and getting off-topic from the game and far more general, and I finished my lunch so I need to get back to work.

Back to talking about the excellent game please. Even though I've allotted my game-budget for the month, I'm seriously considering going over it in order to pick this up sooner rather than later.

[DeToxRox]

Two things. Both are minor to me but:

1. Using Seattle as an expansion team, the default schedule is wonky. I have played like 7 games in 10 days and it is basically like that all year. We have 5 or 6 day breaks once or month then tons of games in a row. This personally doesn't bother me but I can see where it would bother some.

2. The league leaders screen. The green font to indicate your player is impossible to ready in the light color box. Easily fixed by highlighting but just something I'd throw out there.

Love this game though.

[Gary Gorski]

Originally Posted by DeToxRox

Two things. Both are minor to me but:

1. Using Seattle as an expansion team, the default schedule is wonky. I have played like 7 games in 10 days and it is basically like that all year. We have 5 or 6 day breaks once or month then tons of games in a row. This personally doesn't bother me but I can see where it would bother some.

2. The league leaders screen. The green font to indicate your player is impossible to ready in the light color box. Easily fixed by highlighting but just something I'd throw out there.

Love this game though.

The schedule thing has been discussed during the beta - I expanded the schedule to 92 to make it a little bit simpler on my end but I've discussed an alternative design that would get to 82 games without some crazy algorithm and I will be implementing that shortly.

2. It defaults to your team's color but maybe I should just make it something like an off white or something to distinguish it but still be readable easily

[Sweed]

Originally Posted by Icy

Btw, can the thread title be edited to Full game released or something like that?

Fixed

[Gary Gorski]

Originally Posted by Sweed

Fixed

Nice - I was wondering when there would be an Alright boyz...thread for the game

[Gary Gorski]

Update - version 1.01 is available

DDS:PB2 Update - Latest version 1.01 - Wolverine Studios

What's updated :

A very quick and minor yet important update to address the following:
- updated default.dat roster file to begin with properly picked up rookie options for 2nd and 3rd year players in the "post-summer" game mode.
- edited ratings for Jeff Teague, Jrue Holiday, DeJuan Blair and Rodrigue Beaubois
- fixed crash viewing standings after day 1
- fixed crash looking at non-pro league transaction report
- fixed game freeze when advancing to new season using Euro league
- added popup at that stage to alert user game is processing alot of code
- changed display color of your players on league leaders screen from team color to gray

There will certainly be more substantial updates to follow but the contract thing was a biggie because it messed up year two free agency. And as promised there will be a final roster update toward the end of the month in addition to continued bug fixes and suggestions being implemented.

[Atocep]

Originally Posted by Gary Gorski

Update - version 1.01 is available

DDS:PB2 Update - Latest version 1.01 - Wolverine Studios

Thanks Gary

I was coming here to post the contract thing because my first year of free agency (I started my career at the beginning of this season instead of during the summer) was flooded with guys who didn't get their rookie options picked up.

[Big Fo]

Stan van Gundy might have been named Coach of the Year in my first season but I'm getting kind of annoyed with his insistence on giving Dwight Howard a handful of minutes per game despite having a broken arm.

[Gary Gorski]

Originally Posted by Atocep

Thanks Gary

I was coming here to post the contract thing because my first year of free agency (I started my career at the beginning of this season instead of during the summer) was flooded with guys who didn't get their rookie options picked up.

Yeah I noticed it myself last night running some tests - this was the first time I have ever released the game prior to the season and the data I was using for salaries did not have the NBA teams picking up those options yet (they dont have to until the end of the month) so they just went into FA in the game. So I redid the salary part of the file so that the options are picked up - if for some reason a team doesn't pick up somebody's option I will remove it for the final roster build late this month.

[Gary Gorski]

Originally Posted by Big Fo

Stan van Gundy might have been named Coach of the Year in my first season but I'm getting kind of annoyed with his insistence on giving Dwight Howard a handful of minutes per game despite having a broken arm.

Well that's clearly a bug.

The Howard thing could be too - is there no other center on the roster or something or is it a "progressively healed" broken arm where he already sat out for months but is coming back early? If its a recent injury and he's playing I'd like to see the file to see what the logic is. It could be the hidden SVG logic easter egg at work too. (ie do what makes the least amount of sense)

[Big Fo]

Originally Posted by Gary Gorski

Well that's clearly a bug.

The Howard thing could be too - is there no other center on the roster or something or is it a "progressively healed" broken arm where he already sat out for months but is coming back early? If its a recent injury and he's playing I'd like to see the file to see what the logic is. It could be the hidden SVG logic easter egg at work too. (ie do what makes the least amount of sense)

I still have Gortat, he was starting with Howard out. I didn't have a third center and Howard's injury had him at 41% (that number stayed constant for the first two weeks at least, I didn't check towards the end since I am a fast-simmer and I knew the team was going to wind up as the #2 seed anyway). Maybe the SVG AI figured 41% of Howard was better than one of my backup power forwards. For the duration of his injury Howard was the 12th man on the depth chart.

Unfortunately Howard is healthy now and I did not save in the meantime so I'm not sure if sending the file in would do any good.

[Gary Gorski]

Hmm he shouldnt have been playing at 41% - something else must have been at work. Do you still have the file at or around the point of his being injured?

[Gary Gorski]

So....anyone else out there going to give this is a shot? Anything you guys already playing it are liking or disliking? I'm working on the first update right now so if there are good suggestions I want to work them in if possible

[markprior22]

Hey Gary...is there any way to give an option to turn off the sound once you've started playing a game? A couple of times I've been listening to music or radio on the computer and forgot to turn off the sound when starting the game. If not, it's ok...I'll just have to pay closer attention.

[DaddyTorgo]

Originally Posted by Gary Gorski

So....anyone else out there going to give this is a shot? Anything you guys already playing it are liking or disliking? I'm working on the first update right now so if there are good suggestions I want to work them in if possible

I'll be buying .

Just need to pull the trigger one of these days. Already have gaming dollars allocated for later in the month and trying to keep myself to max 1 game/month, so waiting for a moment of weakness or a moment of feeling $$$$.

[Capital]

Very encouraged about what you could come up with for the 82 game schedule when expanding to 32 teams at the start of the game. I never really wanted to play a 92 game schedule and was considering contracting some teams to get to play with 30 teams with expansion.

I will be giving this game some time over the weekend.

[nZane]

Purchased this the other day and have been playing the crap out of it. Good stuff so far!

Any chance you could incorporate the overall and potential ratings on the Team Roster somewhere? Either the Roster or Ratings tabs would work.

One other small thing off the top of my head, also on the Ratings tab of Team Roster, would be to have the ratings sort in descending order when you click a header. Right now, it seems a bit counter-intuitive to have them sort in ascending order.

[Atocep]

Something things I'd like to see:

*Feedback from free agents on why an offer was rejected. "I'm holding out for a better offer", "I'm looking for a team in better position to win a title", "I'm looking for a better opportunity to start", "I going to take my time and see what other offers come along." Stuff like that.

*When starting a game at the beginning of the season instead of the summer have the owner call right before you start so you can go over expectations and cap details.

*In the war room highlight the guys you worked out on the list.

*Email telling me which players showed notable improvement over the offseason and if anyone took a step backwards.

[Coffee Warlord]

Yeah, I'll have to pick this up soon, I'm afraid.

Congrats on the release, Gary!

[Atocep]

Another thing, when a player has played for multiple teams in a season and you bring up his stats page from the player card you see his stats for the first team he played for that season and his totals. It'd be nice to see his stats for each team along with the totals.

[Gary Gorski]

Originally Posted by markprior22

Hey Gary...is there any way to give an option to turn off the sound once you've started playing a game? A couple of times I've been listening to music or radio on the computer and forgot to turn off the sound when starting the game. If not, it's ok...I'll just have to pay closer attention.

I will add an option on the "options" popup in the game

[Gary Gorski]

Originally Posted by Atocep

Another thing, when a player has played for multiple teams in a season and you bring up his stats page from the player card you see his stats for the first team he played for that season and his totals. It'd be nice to see his stats for each team along with the totals.

It should display it by team after season 1 - for example if Vince Carter was traded in the middle of year 1 it should say something like

ORL 40 games, stat line.....
Current Season 70 games, stat line.....

But in year two his stats should read

Current Season 25 games, stat line....
CHI yr1, 30 games, stat line....
ORL yr1, 40 games, stat line...

[Professor58]

Sort of a lazy GM, any way could incorporate the overall and potential ratings on the Free Agent screen? Also ( again lazy) have a shop player around on the trade screen ?

[Sweed]

Game is addictive and the only sports title where I am comfortable simulating games. All others I feel the need to manage\coach but Gary your games allow me to just hire the coach and let him do his thing while I go about the task of building\maintaining the team itself.

On to my suggestions..


1. I posted this, about 10 days ago when I first bought the game, in the First Access section of wolverine but with only one view I'm not sure it was ever noted.

highlighting players when inviting to workout in the mock draft window

Currently the game only highlights players in the selection window if you click on them. Would it be possible, when looking at players to workout before the draft, to highlight players in both the selection window and in the mock-draft window when you click on them?

It would be an easier way to see where the guy projects to go without having to look through the mock draft list to see where, or if, he is on it. This would be nice for the border line guys you might want to invite but you're not sure where he fits, in the mock draft, compared to your position in the real draft. Being able to glance over to the list and immediately see where he is would be a nice little helper.


Certainly not a high priority but would be a nice touch if it is easy to do.

2. Not thrilled with the new "gray" highlighting of our team's players in the league leaders lists. I want my guys to jump out at me not have to scan the list for the "dull spot". Being able to customize the color would be the best solution IMHO.

FWIW I know there were issues using team primary colors as I use the Lakers and the purple was as bad as the new gray. My solution then was to reverse the Lakers primary and secondary colors so my players highlighted in yellow.

3. In the boxscore is there any chance of being able to highlight vertical columns when the header is clicked? The every other color change for horizontal is fine but I like to glance down columns IE steals, TO, rebounds etc. and get a quick over view of how everyone did in that one stat. Not a big deal but would be a nice touch IMHO.

[Gary Gorski]

Originally Posted by Professor58

Sort of a lazy GM, any way could incorporate the overall and potential ratings on the Free Agent screen? Also ( again lazy) have a shop player around on the trade screen ?

Maybe I can add it as an optional rating that is defaulted off that you can turn on with a click - the reason its not there is that some people in the past have been vocal about not wanting to see the overall ratings as they felt it made it "too easy".

[Gary Gorski]

Originally Posted by Sweed

Game is addictive and the only sports title where I am comfortable simulating games. All others I feel the need to manage\coach but Gary your games allow me to just hire the coach and let him do his thing while I go about the task of building\maintaining the team itself.

On to my suggestions..


1. I posted this, about 10 days ago when I first bought the game, in the First Access section of wolverine but with only one view I'm not sure it was ever noted.



2. Not thrilled with the new "gray" highlighting of our team's players in the league leaders lists. I want my guys to jump out at me not have to scan the list for the "dull spot". Being able to customize the color would be the best solution IMHO.

FWIW I know there were issues using team primary colors as I use the Lakers and the purple was as bad as the new gray. My solution then was to reverse the Lakers primary and secondary colors so my players highlighted in yellow.

3. In the boxscore is there any chance of being able to highlight vertical columns when the header is clicked? The every other color change for horizontal is fine but I like to glance down columns IE steals, TO, rebounds etc. and get a quick over view of how everyone did in that one stat. Not a big deal but would be a nice touch IMHO.

1. Yes I will try to highlight those players

2. There are some teams like Miami who's colors are black and a dark red - neither would be ideal in the case so I can just make it yellow to pop more

3. Don't know how much work that would take - if its something actually built into the control it would be an easy fix. If not I will have to investigate what it would take to do it.

[TroyF]

Originally Posted by Gary Gorski

Maybe I can add it as an optional rating that is defaulted off that you can turn on with a click - the reason its not there is that some people in the past have been vocal about not wanting to see the overall ratings as they felt it made it "too easy".

I guess I don't get this. In the real world, an NBA team knows exactly what they are trading for. They know that with Carmelo they'll be getting a star and they'll know exactly what his weaknesses are. They know if they trade for JR Smith they'll be getting a guy who can be anything from a 1 star idiot to a 4 star stud depending on the situation.

That's why those potential ratings are so critical and how often a guy hits them. Ty Lawson could be nothing more than Pargo or he could be a Chris Paul lite. The challenge isn't knowing the players potential, it's trying to figure out how much you are going to give up to take a chance on that potential.

Just my two cents.

[whomario]

Originally Posted by Sweed

1. I posted this, about 10 days ago when I first bought the game, in the First Access section of wolverine but with only one view I'm not sure it was ever noted.

the wolverine board at some point stopped counting views and now counts posts in the "view" category, every new topic has 1 view, every topic with 5 replies has 6 views, every topic with 20 replies has 21 views. So it wasn´t totally ignored, although clearly not interestin enough to garner a response

[Gary Gorski]

Originally Posted by TroyF

I guess I don't get this. In the real world, an NBA team knows exactly what they are trading for. They know that with Carmelo they'll be getting a star and they'll know exactly what his weaknesses are. They know if they trade for JR Smith they'll be getting a guy who can be anything from a 1 star idiot to a 4 star stud depending on the situation.

That's why those potential ratings are so critical and how often a guy hits them. Ty Lawson could be nothing more than Pargo or he could be a Chris Paul lite. The challenge isn't knowing the players potential, it's trying to figure out how much you are going to give up to take a chance on that potential.

Just my two cents.

I just give the people what they want and at the time the people (or at least the vocal ones) felt that seeing the overall ratings splashed all over the place took away from the challenge of the game. If that's not the case any longer I'm happy to make the change - its not like you can't get the overall ratings by clicking on the player card anyway so the info is there - I just made it one extra step to get it since that's what people wanted at the time.

[DaddyTorgo]

Originally Posted by Gary Gorski

I just give the people what they want and at the time the people (or at least the vocal ones) felt that seeing the overall ratings splashed all over the place took away from the challenge of the game. If that's not the case any longer I'm happy to make the change - its not like you can't get the overall ratings by clicking on the player card anyway so the info is there - I just made it one extra step to get it since that's what people wanted at the time.

Hmm...I guess I can see it both ways. Doesn't necessarily bother me the way it is.

[Izulde]

You already know I want the 90, 60, 30 day separate options in trade restrictions back.

I always play with 60 day trade restrictions in DDSPB1 because I always thought the 90 was too restrictive.

[Sweed]

Originally Posted by Gary Gorski

1. Yes I will try to highlight those players

2. There are some teams like Miami who's colors are black and a dark red - neither would be ideal in the case so I can just make it yellow to pop more

3. Don't know how much work that would take - if its something actually built into the control it would be an easy fix. If not I will have to investigate what it would take to do it.

Thanks, I appreciate your efforts.

[Sweed]

Originally Posted by whomario

the wolverine board at some point stopped counting views and now counts posts in the "view" category, every new topic has 1 view, every topic with 5 replies has 6 views, every topic with 20 replies has 21 views. So it wasn´t totally ignored, although clearly not interestin enough to garner a response

Thanks.. :hangs head and slowly walks away in shame:

[Neon_Chaos]

Originally Posted by Gary Gorski

I just give the people what they want and at the time the people (or at least the vocal ones) felt that seeing the overall ratings splashed all over the place took away from the challenge of the game. If that's not the case any longer I'm happy to make the change - its not like you can't get the overall ratings by clicking on the player card anyway so the info is there - I just made it one extra step to get it since that's what people wanted at the time.

This has been my biggest pet peeve with all the DDS ball games.

I never understood why it didn't have the choice to have the overall star ratings on the list. I am a big proponent of having as much information as I could have at a glance. I hated clicking every single one of my players to check the ratings... it was tedious and cumbersome. Instead of having the info at my disposal, i had to click twice per player, one to view his player card and another to go back.

It would be awesome if this was an option that could be turned on and off, similar to hidden player ratings.

[Izulde]

Originally Posted by Gary Gorski

I will add an option on the "options" popup in the game

You can also click the Sound On right now at the game's opening screen to turn it Off like i always do.

[markprior22]

Originally Posted by Izulde

You can also click the Sound On right now at the game's opening screen to turn it Off like i always do.

Unless you forget and move ahead into the game. Then you're screwed until the game is over.

[molson]

Originally Posted by Gary Gorski

I just give the people what they want and at the time the people (or at least the vocal ones) felt that seeing the overall ratings splashed all over the place took away from the challenge of the game. If that's not the case any longer I'm happy to make the change - its not like you can't get the overall ratings by clicking on the player card anyway so the info is there - I just made it one extra step to get it since that's what people wanted at the time.

That's so bizarre that I almost wonder if there was some miscommunication in the feedback. I totally understand wanting less ratings (I always use a limited 2-8 scale, for example, in OOTP), but I've never heard anyone claim that it's good for a text sim "challenge" to have certain information require more clicks to get to. That's just weird.

I think the way to go is just have options on the size of the ratings scale, and have an option for entirely hidden ratings if someone wants that.

[SteveMax58]

Originally Posted by molson

I think the way to go is just have options on the size of the ratings scale, and have an option for entirely hidden ratings if someone wants that.

+1

I think if you want a greater challenge then change the granularity of the ratings. Instead of 1-100, then go 1-5...or a 1-3 scale or A-C, etc.

You should always have a very high level idea of a player's talent...just like we commonly know about every player in the NBA right now. This is similar to how we all might have a different answer on a 1-100 scale for each player...move that scale to 1-5 and we will all agree more often...move it to 1-3 and we'll all likely agree on almost every player...so and so forth. The challenge I think most would appreciate is in how granular they want to get vs. the amount of time they have to play the game. The less time...the more granular one might want them.

Just my 2 cents.

[jbergey22]

A few years in once some of the current players retire the stats start to get wacky.

For instance the C/PF's only have one or two players averaging over 20 points per game. I have 43 players in 2019 averaging over 1.5 blocks per game(11 over 3 and a lot of them are guards)

Only 11 players are averaging over 20 points per game.(1 over 25)

It seems to me that once the current players start retiring we see a lot of equal talent distrubution and the shooting percentages steadily decrease.

I see a lot of 4/5 star players that shoot under 40 percent for some reason. (Taking too many jump shots perhaps?)

[Big Fo]

I would also like sortable overall ratings in the free agency, team roster, and summer league screens, it would save me a lot of clicking. Being able to use overall or potential ratings in the player search screen would also be nice.

I think that maybe the team owner should differentiate between things the previous GM did and what the current one has done. While playing as the Orlando GM I would keep getting complaints about the payroll but it's not my fault that Pietrus, Bass, Gortat, and (epecially) Lewis had such bad, long-term contracts when I took the job. I was never able to trade those guys, nobody else wanted their contracts either. And Orlando's owner IRL has shown a willingness to pay the luxury tax but on the game the owner's willingness to spend is just "average" so maybe that could be changed as well (can't find a way to edit that).

When viewing the Almanac I would like to be able to click on a player's name and then see his profile/ratings (if still active). Say I want to go back to three years ago and see how some of the top draft picks from that year are panning out: I have to go to the draft history in the Almanac, see the player, go to his team (if he even plays on the same team) and then click on him to see his profile/ratings.

Although I have not gone through as many seasons as jbergey22, I have seen some of what he mentioned regarding the shooting percentages of generated players.

[Marmel]

I owned one of the first versions of Wolverine's Pro basketball game and the thing I hated about it was that every new dynasty was pretty much the same. All the players were rated the same, they all seemed to age the same and put up the same numbers career after career.

Does this game function the same way? I'll probably try the demo anyway.

[jbergey22]

Originally Posted by Marmel

I owned one of the first versions of Wolverine's Pro basketball game and the thing I hated about it was that every new dynasty was pretty much the same. All the players were rated the same, they all seemed to age the same and put up the same numbers career after career.

Does this game function the same way? I'll probably try the demo anyway.

I think major improvements have been made in this area. We just need him to tweek a few things about how new players are generated. The future of this game has a bunch of Josh Smith type players and not any Kobe Bryant, Lebron James, Kevin Durant type players. Maybe the players are created too good defensively so it hurts scoring. Im not sure.

Id also like to see a bit more randomness out of the 2nd round. Its seems every player I get in the 2nd round is a 2* player. Id like to see more busts with the once every 3-4 years Gilbert Arenas type that evolves into a 4 star player.

The best news for me is I have had zero crashes with this version. It seems very stable.

[korme]

I'd love to see some mod makers try to set up a roster file from like 1979 or so with draft files in each succeeding year. I'd help if I could.

[Gary Gorski]

Yes, the created players are on my "to-do" list. I certainly agree they need a bit of tweaking. There were comments here and there about some guys in the future during the beta but there wasn't much hard data presented. It's hard to tweak it based on somebody's guess, you know? If you have a league 5 or so years in that you see some of these things in then send me the files (instructions are in the WS Tech Support forum) and I will analyze the ratings compared to where they are when the game starts and can see exactly what is getting skewed over time.

I've also been tweaking the engine a bit (post 1.01) to make the players have an ability to differentiate their play from their ratings based on the players on the floor. What does that mean? Well basically right now I have seen that players that are highly efficient tend to overproduce if you build a "super efficient" team. What the logic needs to take into account (and now does in my 1.1 build I'm working on) is that part of the efficiency of a Mike Miller or Kyle Korver type is that they get open looks based on their opponents having to worry a bit more about someone else. These type of players are not meant to be "the man" and if you effectively put them in that role right now it does not punish them enough. Somebody has to shoot the ball so they get more shots than they deserve and the game thinks they are a high percentage shooter so they make more than they would in that scenario. Going forward those players will not be as efficient shooting the ball without a more dominant "scorer" on the floor.

[Gary Gorski]

dola - the goal of the above is to make it even more realistic in building a team and forcing you to build all the "parts" of a good team. In this case having a player who is a high rated player in scoring is a benefit - even if he himself is not a great % player - the fact that he has a high SC rating means he can create for himself and cause the defense to pay more attention to him thereby allowing your role players to be more efficient

[DaddyTorgo]

Originally Posted by Gary Gorski

Yes, the created players are on my "to-do" list. I certainly agree they need a bit of tweaking. There were comments here and there about some guys in the future during the beta but there wasn't much hard data presented. It's hard to tweak it based on somebody's guess, you know? If you have a league 5 or so years in that you see some of these things in then send me the files (instructions are in the WS Tech Support forum) and I will analyze the ratings compared to where they are when the game starts and can see exactly what is getting skewed over time.

I've also been tweaking the engine a bit (post 1.01) to make the players have an ability to differentiate their play from their ratings based on the players on the floor. What does that mean? Well basically right now I have seen that players that are highly efficient tend to overproduce if you build a "super efficient" team. What the logic needs to take into account (and now does in my 1.1 build I'm working on) is that part of the efficiency of a Mike Miller or Kyle Korver type is that they get open looks based on their opponents having to worry a bit more about someone else. These type of players are not meant to be "the man" and if you effectively put them in that role right now it does not punish them enough. Somebody has to shoot the ball so they get more shots than they deserve and the game thinks they are a high percentage shooter so they make more than they would in that scenario. Going forward those players will not be as efficient shooting the ball without a more dominant "scorer" on the floor.

wow!

color me impressed. that's some higher-level thinking right there!

[jbergey22]

Files sent.

One other thing to look at perhaps is game difficulty. I made it to the conference finals as the Twolves in 2013 and subsequently made it 2 more times after that without doing much of anything other than accepting computer generated trades and drafting.

[Big Fo]

Frustrated in his attempts to win a sixth ring and catch Michael Jordan, Kobe Bryant decided to join the Miami Heat in the 2014 offseason, signing for the mid-level exemption.

As if that team wasn't already stacked (65, 66, and 62 wins the past three years after underachieving in the 2010-11 season) with LeBron, Wade, Bosh, Mike Miller, Udonis Haslem, Carl Landry, Gerald Wallace, Sam Dalembert, and a generated center all having a 2.5 or better overall rating.

But my Magic have beaten them in two of the last three Eastern Conference Finals

I finally got rid of the last bad Otis Smith contract and actually had enough cap room to go after players that wouldn't take the MLE. So now I have Evan Turner to go with 2-time MVP Dwight Howard and reigning league MVP Tiago Splitter (who is a beast, scoring 25 ppg while shooting 60% the last two seasons). It should be another formality of a regular season and then a tough battle against Miami in the ECFs.

[bhsw77]

*Email telling me which players showed notable improvement over the offseason and if anyone took a step backwards.

Question on this Atocep -- this has been suggested before but I have a question that I haven't yet heard a good answer to -- feel free to be the first!

If you do this kind of 'player progression' thing on a game like DDSPB2 that has built-in fog-of-war scouting error, you have to do one of two things.

1. Base it on the scouted ratings, in which case you could have a report of a player getting better who actually got worse, or vice versa, because what changed is your opinion, not their actual abilities.

2. Base it on actual ratings, in which case the player can safely ignore the scouted ratings and it makes the whole thing pointless as it breaks the reality of the game.

Thoughts?

jbergey -- the million-dollar question is WHY is it that easy? Did you get lucky with draft picks? Did you get a bunch of players traded to you in absurd trades? There is 'stupid GM' code in the game which will cause that to happen sometimes, but it's one of those realism v. strategy things -- should the game mimic reality or should it be a pure strategy thing where it should be made as hard as possible, even if RL isn't that way? Gary tends to go the mimicing reality direction, but we are always looking for more input on this.