NBA 2k15 Player Regression in MYLeague Testing

[darkknightrises]

Re: NBA 2k15 Player Regression in MYLeague Testing

A look at the stats show its clear James has declined, and imo driving dunks are a huge indicator of athleticism, and his have taken a nose dive. His concern with minutes and wise decision to go a more youthful team also speaks volumes.

How do his stats show he is clearly in a decline? He just shoot a carrier high in FG % the last 2 years and his assets this year are right around his carrier high. This year his fg% is down compared to the last 2 season but I think a lot of that is being on a new team and a team that has not hit there stride. Intreams of dunks he doesn't drive has much has he used to but I think he is just trying to adjust his game has he gets older and with the way his jump shoot has improved of the years even if he has gotten less athectic he jump shoot has more then made up for that. Plus he has a better post game then he used to. I don't think he has lost any thing in athlectism though has he looks just has fast to me has he ever has and he looks like his vertical leap his just has high has it ever has been.

[darkknightrises]

Re: NBA 2k15 Player Regression in MYLeague Testing

It was an example based on likely hood. He has the lower statistics because he's own a new team with great players. But even if those don't fly up, it's not like 2014 Heat LBJ and 2015 Cavs LBJ lost significant talent. He's still the best player in the league.

I think we all know how unpredictable the NBA is. If you're trying to rationalize the regression in 2K15, then that's not unpredictable either. Andrew Bogut, Horford, and Iguodala become useless 2 years in. Every time. Without fail. If it only happened sometimes, then other times they stayed the same, I would be ecstatic.

You're right, the things we think happen aren't necessarily fact, but you know what else isn't fact? Every NBA player regressing at 27 and 28.

But as for LeBron, CHANCES are he won't show serious decline until 33 or 34. I never know honestly because no one is psychic.

Yeah some people say that LeBron realies to much on athlectism but I don't think that is true has he has already improved his jump shoot a lot form his first few years in the league and his post game to. What's to say he wont continue to improve things like that to make up for lose of athlectism has he gets older? Kobe 2 years ago in the 2012-2013 season had one of his best seasons of his carrier at the age of 34 and at age 34 his shooting was night and day better then when he was younger so even though he was already way way less athlectic he still got things down but in different ways with more jump shoots, post ups and better foot work. I can see leborn continuing to improve his jump shooting and foot work and post ups to has he gets older.

[BigT34]

Re: NBA 2k15 Player Regression in MYLeague Testing

I don't know what the per stat thing is has you don't really hear people talk about it so I don't think that really means any thing. You say he has started to get less athletic but I don't see any less athectism then he used to have at all. He is still the best player in the game and he is just a few days away form 30 and with going form high school to the nba and with all the finals he has been to you can say he is a old 30 with all the games he has already played. I do think he has maybe started to decline some but very little and the only reason I would say he has declined at all is because his rebounding is down.


With a guy like James I wonder with how good of a passer he is if he will try to get guys even more involed has he gets older. You talk about tmac and about stoudierm both of them had a lot of injures. The thing is in this game everyone declines like they had a lot of injures. No one declines in this game like they wore heathly. Stoudierm was is a guy that relied to much on his athectism. Guys that realy to much on athectism like a Dwight howard should decline at a earlier age. In this game everyone decines at the same age no matter how much the realie on there athectism or not.

PER is Player Efficiency Rating. You've never heard of it?

Just hit Y (or triangle) on the stats screen in NBA 2k15. It's one of the most commonly used advanced stats out there.

[JRxPHANTOM]

Re: NBA 2k15 Player Regression in MYLeague Testing

MOST players decline by 28-29. The data that support that is absolutely not debatable. The fact that 17/20 guys in the top-20 for PER last year were 29 or younger kind of proves the point that it's exceedingly rare for a player to continue to dominate past age 28.

I'll check out the age breakdown for my active MyLeague when I get home today. I'm curious to tally the numbers and actually see--I know there are a few guys still sticking around and playing well in their 30s, but they are declining.

Re: TMac, lots of guys have lots of injuries. Lots of guys who are regressing in this game have lots of injuries, too. I saw a guy who was generated in my first draft class suffer multiple ankle and knee injuries. He's 26, still a great scorer, but his athleticism is not what it was, and I suspect he'll regress faster than he would had he not been injured. When we sim ahead, are people keeping track of each player, injury by injury, and seeing if that has a bearing on things? I would hope it would, but it'd be nice to know.

I'm not saying regression couldn't be improved in this game (as well as progression). I think there's a ton of room to improve things and generate a richer experience. I just want us to compile better data to compare--if 10 years into MyLeague, only 9% of active NBA players are 31 or older, I agree, that's a huge problem. But let's actually gather that data, first.

BIgT we're not arguing your point. Guys do decline at 28-29 and probably most of them. But this goes back to what I already stated, the decline is too much every offseason in the player progression screen. It has to be toned down to like it was in the previous 2K games. I've never complained not once about regression until this year.

FYI, the problem is that too many points are being lost rapidly, not that guys are regressing at 28. I'm fine with that, it's the -5 and -4 point drops at that age that happen every year and so forth that kills the whole league after a few years.

[darkknightrises]

Re: NBA 2k15 Player Regression in MYLeague Testing

PER is Player Efficiency Rating. You've never heard of it?

Just hit Y (or triangle) on the stats screen in NBA 2k15. It's one of the most commonly used advanced stats out there.

I have heard of it but they almost never talk about it on tv and I don't know how it is coculatied at all and my eye test tell me that james is either still in his prim or has a slight decline.

[darkknightrises]

Re: NBA 2k15 Player Regression in MYLeague Testing

BIgT we're not arguing your point. Guys do decline at 28-29 and probably most of them. But this goes back to what I already stated, the decline is too much every offseason in the player progression screen. It has to be toned down to like it was in the previous 2K games. I've never complained not once about regression until this year.

FYI, the problem is that too many points are being lost rapidly, not that guys are regressing at 28. I'm fine with that, it's the -5 and -4 point drops at that age that happen every year and so forth that kills the whole league after a few years.

Yeah if there was more vereation and you had some guys decline by 1-2 points but right now I would say like 75% of the guys that decline are by 4-6 points and has a whole like 35% of the players decline in the game.

[BigT34]

Re: NBA 2k15 Player Regression in MYLeague Testing

It's an interesting question as to how much a guy should decline at a given age.

http://wagesofwins.com/nba-players-age-like-milk/

Guys really start declining, on average, around 25/26. The drop-off after 32 is pretty profound.

Where I think NBA 2K series has room to improve is in creating more variability in this process. There are rare exceptions to these aging curves, guys like Duncan, who's stayed consistently good, and guys like Nash, who actually got BETTER past age 30 (Korver another example). They're rare, there should only be a handful of them, but it'd be nice to see guys improve, then regress, then improve again because they diversify their game/develop a new skill, etc.

In that sense, this is just as much about progression as it is regression. Boris Diaw got into the right environment and then progressed in the past couple of years. Jason Kidd kept developing as an outside shooter, which added years to his career. Vince Carter is sticking around because he can still shoot the ball. Bruce Bowen became a consistent starter in his 30s, and played until 38, by becoming a tenacious defender and corner 3 specialist. Somehow, Andre Miller is still in the NBA.

These kinds of players add character to the league, in the sense of "man, that guy is STILL around?" Some guys who stick around until they're 35 or so are aging superstars who still have a few elite skills, but others are role-players who manage to just gut out enough value to stick around. BUT, they're rare--the guys who stick around past age 32 are unique and very special players.

I think if we want to really critique this, we need much larger sample sizes and much more nuanced data collection. Some guys SHOULD drop 4-5 points from 28 to 29--that happens in real life. Other guys should drop more than that, and some less than that. The important question is what % of players should do that, and what skills should they lose and in what order? If a player's OVR is heavily driven by athleticism, he should drop more than a guy whose OVR is based on IQ, passing, ballhandling, and shooting.

We also just need greater customizability. I'm convinced that 2K Sports could create a staggeringly realistic progression/regression/aging system, and people would still form a huge thread talking about how broken it was.

[BigT34]

Re: NBA 2k15 Player Regression in MYLeague Testing

I have heard of it but they almost never talk about it on tv and I don't know how it is coculatied at all and my eye test tell me that james is either still in his prim or has a slight decline.

But that's kind of the point. Our eyes (along with our brains, memories, perceptions, biases) can easily deceive us.

[BigT34]

Re: NBA 2k15 Player Regression in MYLeague Testing

Also, let's just remember that when we're thinking of these guys who continue to play well at 32, 34 etc., we are dealing with major survivorship bias. Anybody left playing in the NBA at 35 is one of only 5 guys from his initial age group that survived. If there were 50 guys his age 10 years ago, 90% of them are out of the league now. Those are guys who were solid, NBA-caliber players at age 25, and most of whom actually did completely tank/fall off somewhere between age 28-32, most likely.

This is actually a very active area of interest among a lot of people in the analytics community. We don't exactly know, just yet, how players age--we have some solid aggregate models, but it's a lot of work to try to tease it out at the individual level. It'd be a statistics PhD thesis, most likely.

[Zane3490]

Re: NBA 2k15 Player Regression in MYLeague Testing

You also have to look at the older guys who have actually made it into their 30's to see why they continue to progress.

In my eyes there are 3 groups of people who can play successfully into their 30's.

Duncan, Kobe, Dirk, KG, Pierce. They're all Hall of Famers and players like LeBron and Durant will follow their paths and continue to be extremely relevant. Where as the people who fall off in the game are fringe all-stars or role players.

Bigs also will continue to have an impact into their later years because bigs are a premium as well as the fact that they take a bit longer to develop. The biggest reason perimeter players don't continue to succeed is because they lose their athleticism and then they become just an average player which brings me to the last type of player that survives, and they're the high-IQ type like D-Fish, Nash and J-Kidd. All of them are really smart players who have learned to be successful outside of their athleticism.

Just my 2 cents I guess. But with that being said, players do regress too quickly in this game. Rondo drops four points but still wants a huge contract. Umm no.

[BigT34]

Re: NBA 2k15 Player Regression in MYLeague Testing

You also have to look at the older guys who have actually made it into their 30's to see why they continue to progress.

In my eyes there are 3 groups of people who can play successfully into their 30's.

Duncan, Kobe, Dirk, KG, Pierce. They're all Hall of Famers and players like LeBron and Durant will follow their paths and continue to be extremely relevant. Where as the people who fall off in the game are fringe all-stars or role players.

Bigs also will continue to have an impact into their later years because bigs are a premium as well as the fact that they take a bit longer to develop. The biggest reason perimeter players don't continue to succeed is because they lose their athleticism and then they become just an average player which brings me to the last type of player that survives, and they're the high-IQ type like D-Fish, Nash and J-Kidd. All of them are really smart players who have learned to be successful outside of their athleticism.

Just my 2 cents I guess. But with that being said, players do regress too quickly in this game. Rondo drops four points but still wants a huge contract. Umm no.

But why is that so unrealistic about Rondo?

There are countless guys who are getting overpaid as aging, declining veterans.

One issue here is that our information is too good--we actually KNOW that the player's OVR declined 4 points. In real life, you'd never know that--you'd just be signing a player off a good season, and hope that he still has a few good years left in the tank. There are no absolute ratings in real life, so guys do get overpaid. It's only unrealistic insofar as you actually know Rondo's true attributes and that they've declined before the season even started. THAT'S what is unrealistic.

In my mind, the computer doing stupid things is at least one way to approximate the fact that information is imperfect in real basketball. Further, real-world basketball is also full of stupidity--look at Isiah Thomas' tenure as Knicks GM, for one. It'd be really cool if there was a spectrum of CPU GM AI, and that there were a few really bright GMs and a few really, really stupid ones.

I'd love it if the game actually introduced more error in player ratings, and made it dependent on scouting ability and also using advanced statistics. But that would drive this game way more towards stats-based sim, which is a much smaller market share.

[geisterhome]

Re: NBA 2k15 Player Regression in MYLeague Testing

Love the discussion about real life declining and how it can be implemented in the game. For this year I'd already be happy if 2k reversed it to what it was like the last few years. A more complex and thus realistic scheme could be smth to get into the game for next year. taking into consideration injuries, different skillsets and maybe having (some) players developing different parts of thier game as they age.

[MrScum]

Re: NBA 2k15 Player Regression in MYLeague Testing

Maybe one of us should make a video about it. Or get one of those "famous" 2k youtube guys to make a video about it. I guarantee once it picks up a few thousand views 2k would take notice.

[Matty Aqua]

Re: NBA 2k15 Player Regression in MYLeague Testing

Hey guys i have been keeping an eye on this thread, is there a work-around to the regression issue?

[Poke]

Re: NBA 2k15 Player Regression in MYLeague Testing

Yeah man, I think you and Aqua both are looking at the overalls of the players as soon as you hit the offseason. That was what I also did initially and was shocked that anyone considered it an issue because I mostly saw people not dropping at all.


In all actuality however, the issue takes place once following the free agency period when you go through the "player progression" task. That is where everyone's overall points drop so much. And it's not the stars that are the problems. It's the players a tier below them. I know that this has been done numerous times but I just want to reiterate. Below is a list of some of the players over 28 at the player progression screen.


Lebron James - 97(0)
Chris Paul - 88(-2)
Rajon Rondo - 84(-3)
Kobe Bryant - 83(-4)
Dwayne Wade - 82(-3)
LaMarcus Aldridge - 81(-2)
Roy Hibbert - 76(-4)
Kyle Lowry - 75(-4)
Paul Millsap 74(-5)
Luol Deng - 75(-4)
Jeff Green - 73(-5)
Courtney Lee - 74(-4)
Taj Gibson - 71(-4)
Omer Asik - 70(-5)
J.R. Smith 70(-5)
Tiaggo Splitter - 70(-4)
Kevin Martin - 69(-7)
Martell Webster - 67(-5)
Andrea Bargani - 67(-4)
Jason Thompson - 65(-5)
Marcus Thornton - 66(-5)






From looking at the players above, I think it is fair to say that the stars/superstars are regressing at a reasonable rate. I think that most people don't have a problem with the way the big time players regress. I think the bigger issue is that the NBA is full of quality starters/role players that are over the age of 28 but when they decrease 4 and 5 points each year on a CONSISTENT BASIS, they simply disappear.

No, I was actually referring to player progression after free agent signing.