Rotations/Minutes Played

[Cycloniac]

So, I'm getting a bit concerned now.

Recently, I made a custom roster for personal use; just tweaked the T-Wolves and Lakers rotations for last Sunday's game. Boozer was on the bench, but I gave him more minutes than Ed Davis. Same thing with Ronnie Price starting over Lin. I used auto substitutions.

After the game, both Ed Davis and Ronnie Price played about 35 minutes each; I had set Davis to around 25 and Price to 20.

Why does this happen? Are rotations broken for played games? Why will starters play 33+ minutes, regardless of the minutes specified in their rotations? Does anyone know how/if this can be fixed?

[Shady Mike]

Re: Rotations/Minutes Played

It is actually broken, before the patch a lot of people were saying that the lack of fouls was causing the CPU not to have enough opportunities to sub players in and out, but now that we have the fouls fixed it is clear the the CPU does not follow the rotations properly. Even when they do sub they sub like 4 guys at a time, and it's really annoying. I was down by 2+ in a game, and the Thunder kept their starters in until 4 seconds left in the game lol.

I like to keep my Big men fresh so I normally play a rotation of 4 or so bigs playing 25 or so minutes, but if you use the automatic rotation every single starter will play around 33-39 minutes with barely any subs regardless of how you set your rotation beforehand.

For my own team I just switched to manual subs, but for now I see no fix for the CPU.

[joosegoose]

Re: Rotations/Minutes Played

It is actually broken, before the patch a lot of people were saying that the lack of fouls was causing the CPU not to have enough opportunities to sub players in and out, but now that we have the fouls fixed it is clear the the CPU does not follow the rotations properly. Even when they do sub they sub like 4 guys at a time, and it's really annoying. I was down by 2+ in a game, and the Thunder kept their starters in until 4 seconds left in the game lol.

I like to keep my Big men fresh so I normally play a rotation of 4 or so bigs playing 25 or so minutes, but if you use the automatic rotation every single starter will play around 33-39 minutes with barely any subs regardless of how you set your rotation beforehand.

For my own team I just switched to manual subs, but for now I see no fix for the CPU.

Came here to say this. I held out a little hope that increased stoppages in play from the patch would smooth out the rotations but it hasn't done much. Without some user input it's impossible to get starters with 20 minutes or a 6th man with 30. I believe the biggest culprit is the 4th quarter--starters play almost the entire period regardless.

The only difference I have is that I keep auto subs but make some manual subs throughout the game. I'll usually manually sub out my weakest starter a couple minutes into the game. Sadly there's no cpu fix of course.

[joosegoose]

Re: Rotations/Minutes Played

I'm getting fed up with this and was going to make a thread, but I saw this old thread and that I had in fact commented on it a while back

I can't stand this anymore. When I'm playing I have no desire to coach, that's why I set up my rotations before the game. It seems I need to go to manual subs, though, just to avoid all of my starters playing 33+ minutes every game. What's the point of having a good 6th man if the game gives him scrub minutes?

I've even gone through to make sure I have valid rotations, i.e. enough minutes at PG, no overcrowding of post minutes, etc, but I'll play the game and see a post player come in at SF for no reason. I can have a SG/SF who should play no minutes at SG because that position is covered by guys who can only play SG, but the game will play him at SG anyways and short the minutes of the other SGs while overplaying the SF starter to compensate. It's beyond maddening

This is more than a user issue of inconvenience, though, the cpu has poorly managed rotations and their starters are often completely gassed at the end of the game as a result. Is this a legacy issue? Is this just "how it is," or is there a way to fix it?

[Comduklakis]

Re: Rotations/Minutes Played

This has been an issue for years. CPU strugges to give bench guys adequate minutes when starters are set to play less than 30. The AI also struggles to deal with secondary positions. Pre-trade, the Suns had a horrible time with getting minutes right (talking simulation here) because the AI couldn't understand have Thomas, Bledsoe and Dragic out there at the same time. It struggles with the concept of teams going small with 2s playing the 3 spot or 3s playing the 4 in crunch time like so many teams are apt to do. They did seem to finally fix the issue with guys with zero minutes in the rotation still always getting 1 or 2 minutes, but yeah they suck at dealing with 6th men who play more than starters or teams that like to use players at multiple positions.

Of course this is the same AI that consistently plays guys with 3 fouls and picks up a 4th in the first half. Seems to me there should be coding to rank priority, such as: fouls, exhaustion, rotation rather than being so doctrinaire in rotation (despite the flaws mentioned above) that they are having guys pick up 4 fouls in the 1st half.

[joosegoose]

Re: Rotations/Minutes Played

This has been an issue for years. CPU strugges to give bench guys adequate minutes when starters are set to play less than 30. The AI also struggles to deal with secondary positions. Pre-trade, the Suns had a horrible time with getting minutes right (talking simulation here) because the AI couldn't understand have Thomas, Bledsoe and Dragic out there at the same time. It struggles with the concept of teams going small with 2s playing the 3 spot or 3s playing the 4 in crunch time like so many teams are apt to do. They did seem to finally fix the issue with guys with zero minutes in the rotation still always getting 1 or 2 minutes, but yeah they suck at dealing with 6th men who play more than starters or teams that like to use players at multiple positions.

Of course this is the same AI that consistently plays guys with 3 fouls and picks up a 4th in the first half. Seems to me there should be coding to rank priority, such as: fouls, exhaustion, rotation rather than being so doctrinaire in rotation (despite the flaws mentioned above) that they are having guys pick up 4 fouls in the 1st half.

A big problem is the cpu is way too late on making the first sub of the game when you have a sub-30 minute starter. The player usually won't be subbed out until there are about 4 minutes left in the first, and he'll come in at the beginning of the 4th to play a solid 90% of the final quarter.

It's unfortunate that there are such issues as inability to handle certain lineups such as the 3 guard Suns, but there are even issues with more "typical" lineups.

- If I'm the Heat and am starting Dragic and Wade with 35 minutes each and assign Napier to play the remaining 26, the game simply won't allow it. Napier will play about 18 (maybe) and someone like James Ennis will pick up the slack and play at SG. Because there is now a shortage of SF minutes, Luol Deng gets overplayed and plays like 38 minutes even though he's assigned for 30.

I'm at the point where I enjoy the game much less if I'm making manual subs because I want to be true to my minutes/rotations and that's more than I want to think about when I play. On the other hand, I see big role players hardly playing, not to mention starters completely gassed at the end of games and getting just as frustrated.

What's the point of setting auto-subs to "fatigue" or "rotation" if the rotation setting (and minutes allocation) doesn't work? A constructive idea for future games would be to allow us to specify where we want each player to play his minutes. If I assign 35 minutes to Dragic, let me specify 22 minutes at the point and 13 at SG.

[timsmooth503pa]

Re: Rotations/Minutes Played

So, I'm getting a bit concerned now.

Recently, I made a custom roster for personal use; just tweaked the T-Wolves and Lakers rotations for last Sunday's game. Boozer was on the bench, but I gave him more minutes than Ed Davis. Same thing with Ronnie Price starting over Lin. I used auto substitutions.

After the game, both Ed Davis and Ronnie Price played about 35 minutes each; I had set Davis to around 25 and Price to 20.

Why does this happen? Are rotations broken for played games? Why will starters play 33+ minutes, regardless of the minutes specified in their rotations? Does anyone know how/if this can be fixed?

cycloniac i updated them everyday and i think honestly for the first 3 quarters the auto subs work pretty well but come the fourth quarter whenever a starter comes into the game they do not come out for the rest of the game me personally i set them on auto subs but sub myself in this case if someone is supposed to get a certain minutes of the bench they wont get taking out until maybe the beginning of the next quarter causing the auto subs to try to weigh out the minutes according because you had you own rotation going the quarter before that and at the end of the game you will see the difference

[DC]

Re: Rotations/Minutes Played

What are the bench usage coaching slider at.

How I have it set up. If a team has 8 players that play 15+ mpg, I set the bench usage to 8.

Also, there is a minutes allotment slider that should equal the number of minutes that the bench players should play.

I made spreadsheet with MPG rotations. You can take a look at the rotations tab at the bottom

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets...gid=1886929814

[Real2KInsider]

Re: Rotations/Minutes Played

This will likely be improved upon in 2K16

[Cycloniac]

Re: Rotations/Minutes Played

What are the bench usage coaching slider at.

How I have it set up. If a team has 8 players that play 15+ mpg, I set the bench usage to 8.

Also, there is a minutes allotment slider that should equal the number of minutes that the bench players should play.

I made spreadsheet with MPG rotations. You can take a look at the rotations tab at the bottom

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets...gid=1886929814

I've tested this pretty extensively, and I don't think the coaching sliders really affect in-game substitions very much.

[bo_jax2000]

Re: Rotations/Minutes Played

Have you tried using "fatigue" as your substitution method instead of "rotation"?

[Cycloniac]

Re: Rotations/Minutes Played

Have you tried using "fatigue" as your substitution method instead of "rotation"?

Yup and results weren't really any better.

[joosegoose]

Re: Rotations/Minutes Played

<iframe class="imgur-album" width="100%" height="550" frameborder="0" src="//imgur.com/a/HoYIi/embed"></iframe>

Pretty typical results. Starters all played 32+ minutes, bench guys were largely random. LOL @ McRoberts's minutes, he's supposed to average 22 a night and that was the difference between him and my starting center (who is only supposed to play 2 mpg more). 6th man in the rotation played the least amount of minutes in the game despite not being in foul trouble or struggling horribly.

Also, I love how I'm trying to limit Wade's minutes while he's recovering from injury but the cpu had him reach that mark at the start of the 4th. An injured Wade should totally be playing 36.

Perhaps it will be improved in next years game, but it's still pretty bad that it's so consistently poor this year. It makes filling out a proper lineup and balanced team largely pointless. Also doesn't help when cpu teams sign 2 great players at the same position and bring one off the bench, as that player won't play nearly enough minutes.

[nip83]

Re: Rotations/Minutes Played

I believe the cpu is mirroring the opponent's substitutions.This is why we see patterns like all bench players being subbed in/out at the same time.

This problem has been for years,and unless you make manual subs ,it is extremely rare to see a bench unit go against the starters of the opposing team.

I have even got big comebacks vs the cpu in the 4th ,cause of it's scripted tendency to play starters the whole quarter.Eventually they get extremely tired and miss shots without any great defense.

[Cycloniac]

Re: Rotations/Minutes Played

I believe the cpu is mirroring the opponent's substitutions.This is why we see patterns like all bench players being subbed in/out at the same time.

This problem has been for years,and unless you make manual subs ,it is extremely rare to see a bench unit go against the starters of the opposing team.

I have even got big comebacks vs the cpu in the 4th ,cause of it's scripted tendency to play starters the whole quarter.Eventually they get extremely tired and miss shots without any great defense.

To ensure that the CPU doesn't sub the entire bench in an out, you have to ensure that bench utilization is set to 100. I also set bench depth to 10, and use 9 man rotations (as most NBA teams do).

I have finally found a way to ensure that the CPU will utilize it's bench propery. This was tested using my custom roster, but should work with any roster because - as far as I can tell - fatigue doesn't really affect manual subs.

I've used the following rules when assigning minutes:
-Bench depth = 10
-Bench utilization = 100
-Lineup performance factor = 50
-Only use values ending in 5 or 0 e.g. 30, 35
-Max minutes allocated = 35 per player
-If a starter averages < 30 MPG, his in-game minutes should be set to 25
-If a starter averages < 25 MPG, his in-game minutes should be set to 20
-If a starter averages < 20 MPG, his in-game minutes should be set to 15
-If a bench player averages > 25 MPG, his in-game minutes should be set to 35
-If a bench player averages 20 or more MPG, his in-game minutes should be set to 30
-If a bench player averages < 20 MPG, his in-game minutes should be set to 25
-If a bench player is in the 9th rotation slot, his in-game minutes should be set to either 15 or 10, depending on minutes remaining

This is about as good as I can get minutes played with 2k's current hard-coding, but I think it works rather well. Below is a Cleveland Cavaliers rotation with the player's actual average MPG in brackets, as it should be entered in-game.

STARTERS
PG - Kyrie Irving: 35 (36.8)
SG - Shawn Marrion: 15 (19.2)
SF - LeBron James: 35 (36.3)
PF - Kevin Love: 35 (34.2)
C - Anderson Varejao: 20 (24.2)

BENCH
1. Tristan Thompson: 35 (27.2)
2. Dion Waiters: 30 (23.8)
3. Matthew Dellavedova: 25 (19.8)
4. Mike Miller: 10 (13.2)