NBA 2K18 Offensive Tendencies, AI Execution & Motion Blog From Da_Czar

[JoFri]

Re: NBA 2K18 Offensive Tendencies, AI Execution & Motion Blog From Da_Czar

Sorry for the confusion. To clarify, I meant for the CPU mainly. Either way, user or CPU if you go into playbooks you can see the players playsheet and it will list plays under a SG designed for a sf, or a PF post up play under a center's play sheet etc. I noticed this way back in testing when I had Brook Lopez's touches on 100 and all other players on 0, and Luis Scola/Trevor Booker were getting tons of plays called for them still.

This happens because All plays of 1 play type are grouped together regardless of position. So an ISO designed for a pg can be under Lebron's playsheet(as long as ISO is one of his 4 play types) so when the game decides to give a touch to LBJ, it's now going to the PG actually.

Hope that clears up the issue I'm talking about.

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Thanks. Ace on?
This is interesting. Would be great if Czar can shed a light.




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[JoFri]

Re: NBA 2K18 Offensive Tendencies, AI Execution & Motion Blog From Da_Czar

You used to be able to manually assign plays, but since you cannot anymore, I'm not a fan of this system. If I am looking to run a play for Steph, I don't want to see Klay's plays...


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I kinda like this feature as it saves me a lot of time for customising the list of plays for each player. Problem is, a lot of pages to flip to get to that play. But after sometime, I got used to it.

I just want the order of the play to be controlled. Last time, I need to un-select and select a play from the playbook just to ensure the ones I run frequently to be at the top of the list. Now I just skip it .... too much time and effort. Again, just flipping through the pages. I got 8 pages for Wade ... Lol



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[JoFri]

NBA 2K18 Offensive Tendencies, AI Execution & Motion Blog From Da_Czar

Another question:

I know that there are hundreds of plays in the game. But when i play the AI i see maybe half a dozen plays the cpu uses again and again and again. Not much variety at all.

How will 2k18 play in that regard?

Have to disagree. I run the Spurs playbook on bulls and when I (bulls) play against Spurs (same playbook) in 2K17, I saw a good mix of Zipper, Pnr, post and Swing actions from the playbook. I could read those plays bcos I use them too. So whenever I play against the Spurs I have some advantage bcos I knew all their plays by hard.

What I did was to re-assign the play types to make it relevant for each of the players in the team i.e. Spurs. And in Spurs Poe, I set balance or smtg.

If u have time, u can adjust the player tendency to play more pnr or postup. But not for me, as I rely solely on 2K's default tendency. Other than attribute on Touches, I believe the player tendency has an impact on the Cpu choice of plays. If there's any SIM roster to recommend, pm me pls



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[raiderphantom]

Re: NBA 2K18 Offensive Tendencies, AI Execution & Motion Blog From Da_Czar

Thanks. Ace on?
This is interesting. Would be great if Czar can shed a light.




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Whether Ace is on or off this happens. It's part of the playbook design. I can work around it, but it is another obstacle.

When distributing touches, it makes it difficult. The way I do it is I find the primary player for that play type for each team and try to make sure all of those plays are focused on him if that makes sense.

So if my starting lineup has a 3pt shooter at the 2 and a pure slasher at the 3, I have to eliminate 3pt plays for small forwards from the playbook even if it affects the bench or my slasher might get a ton of down screens called for him etc. lol. Ok now I think I've derailed this thread too much. My apologies.


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[Da_Czar]

Re: NBA 2K18 Offensive Tendencies, AI Execution & Motion Blog From Da_Czar

Through pm or twitter?
I saw a lot of plays, either slow to initiate or didnt run like it does in the playbook menu.



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PM always works unless my inbox is full. The playbook menu is not a great tool to see how a play runs especially this year. Defensive pressure can force a branch and those are not covered by that menu.


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[Da_Czar]

Re: NBA 2K18 Offensive Tendencies, AI Execution & Motion Blog From Da_Czar

Hey Czar, many props to you for keeping this thing going. I was going to hop on 2k17 today for a bit in prep for 2k18 just to get reacclimated to the gameplay of 2k. Watching the vids, seems like a lot in movement has changed, and since Lives controls mirror yours pretty well, is it worth going back to 2k17? I assume the "feel" of the sticks are completely different this year, so 2k17 may not even help .

Again, many thanks for what you guys are doing, putting in the work for those of us who don't want to bicycle through the neighborhood, instead play a great x's and o's game.

Nah. 2k17 won't really help you with 2K16 the feel completely different ( to me)) They have a different flow as well.


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[ataman5]

Re: NBA 2K18 Offensive Tendencies, AI Execution & Motion Blog From Da_Czar

I don't know if i will be clear enough to explain what i want to but hopefully as Da_Czar would understand and i get an answer..

In MyLeague especially for Online MyLeague we can change playbook sets fe.

If i control Orlando Magic i can change my playbook to Utah Jazz playbook then i start making changes and the user who control Jazz if set to Jazz playbook gets affected by my changes as well. It's a very bad combination as the way those playbooks are assigned and controlled. So if i'm clear enough until here has it been changed?

Can we form and adjust our playbooks starting with another team and editing from there and the one who truly use doesn't get affected by my modifications.

Thanks in advance.

[Da_Czar]

Re: NBA 2K18 Offensive Tendencies, AI Execution & Motion Blog From Da_Czar

Big Czar whats good brother!

Appreciate the insane amount of work you put in this dev cycle as every one since you been part of the team. Its music to my ears the amount of love AI tendencies has received and will continue to receive under your watch. Also appreciate you in here grindin with us. Respect.

From the videos I've seen, its very apparent we will be facing a much more basketball intelligent opponent in the CPU than before, where without major tendency overhauls (and even with them) I'd sometimes have to "help" the CPU score rather than wait for them to waste 24 seconds before setting for a bad fadeaway 3.

Will the AI take more into account someone having a good or bad game? What I mean is, rather than a superstar go 6 for 35 from the field, will he recognize his struggles and facilitate a play here and there. Or will ACE maybe call a greater variance of plays to feed another hot hand?

Also, and I apologize if I missed this answer as I know this is a favorite question of MyLeaguers, are all the ACE concepts coded to the team as last year or to the coach?

Im also looking forward to the answer to Smirkin Dirks question of what shouldnt we as roster editors mess with. Great question Dirk.

Thanks again Czar, its you guys, Dave, Leftos, that keep bringing me back when I swear I'm done haha

**edit**

Almost forgot the question Im most hopeful in having a positive response to, although I'm not sure if you'd be the best to ask since it's not your area. But is anything, freelance, play type edits, defensive adjustments, etc. savable from game to game, specifically online.
Honestly I'd feel bad making every opponent wait at least 90 seconds while I set up all my crap lol.

Thank you. Good to hear from you fam!

There are multiple ways we look at AI performance in regards to how the game is going but we probably look at the good more than the bad.

We could stand to develop more systems around what happens when a star is playing with poor efficiency. Also when we look at success we do look at efficiency but it is not as deep as I assume you would want.

When someone is cooking though or they have a mismatch iso or post we definitely look at that and the game-plan adjusts. So early reports with the demo of IT taking all the shots means that system is working.

If IT catches fire we going to let him cook until he calms down. At this point we don't have advanced logic that says hey this is still lebron taper Isiah.

Ace calls types of plays we would have to do some serious work to get ace to look at individual plays and vary them. Right now ace calls the types and the play system handles the variance but there is nothing super intelligent about how the system handles invididual plays. That is super granular and we frankly have had bigger fish to fry.

Unfortunatley on your last question that is better suited for one of the online producers as they control all of that stuff. I don't believe we added anything to save those settings but I wouldn't really know.

Oh I believe ACE is tied to the coach but I have to verify that. I confuse that sometimes and I don't want to give you bad info.


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[Da_Czar]

Re: NBA 2K18 Offensive Tendencies, AI Execution & Motion Blog From Da_Czar

Question Czar, I hope it's appropriate to ask here. Will there be more room in playbooks this year? The issue I ran into on 2k17 was having multiple positions with the same play type.



I'd have a SG and SF with 3Pt as priority 1 in the play types, but the SG playsheet would still list the SF plays. So hypothetically If i had Courtney Lee and Melo, and wanted the cpu to run more plays for Melo and had Melo's touch tendency on 90 and Lee at 60, the game would think its calling a play for Melo but since Melo has a play for Lee on his playsheet it would screw things up. This happened for all positions/play types.



Just curious if there's any change made to this system. Thanks.

No, playbooks are still at 50 plays per team.

I'm confused about the situation you presented. If you have them both set to the same primary play-types thier plays would be the exact same.

Either the play branches and it is running a play for one and it branches to the other. Or you have a play that incorrectly says it is for the sg when it is actually for the sf.

But plays called are called by position and according to the play-type so technically what your describing shouldn't be possible unless it is an issue I described above or you have auto plays on or some other setting.

And we would have to look at the specific plays. Especially this year with Flow tech calling a play for a player is almost an old fashion notion. You are calling an action and there are several possible end action scenarios that could play out depending on defensive coverage and adjustments.

So calling a play for someone this year is no guarantee they actually get the shot especially with the new iso tendencies and flow tech.


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[Thetruth9012]

Re: NBA 2K18 Offensive Tendencies, AI Execution & Motion Blog From Da_Czar

Thank you. Good to hear from you fam!

There are multiple ways we look at AI performance in regards to how the game is going but we probably look at the good more than the bad.

We could stand to develop more systems around what happens when a star is playing with poor efficiency. Also when we look at success we do look at efficiency but it is not as deep as I assume you would want.

When someone is cooking though or they have a mismatch iso or post we definitely look at that and the game-plan adjusts. So early reports with the demo of IT taking all the shots means that system is working.

If IT catches fire we going to let him cook until he calms down. At this point we don't have advanced logic that says hey this is still lebron taper Isiah.

Ace calls types of plays we would have to do some serious work to get ace to look at individual plays and vary them. Right now ace calls the types and the play system handles the variance but there is nothing super intelligent about how the system handles invididual plays. That is super granular and we frankly have had bigger fish to fry.

Unfortunatley on your last question that is better suited for one of the online producers as they control all of that stuff. I don't believe we added anything to save those settings but I wouldn't really know.

Oh I believe ACE is tied to the coach but I have to verify that. I confuse that sometimes and I don't want to give you bad info.


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Played 2ku today and sometimes guys like zaza or tristan thompson are in the corner in HCO.

Cpu cavs like to pass to Thompson in that situation and then he dont know what to do its a waste of possesion.

[Da_Czar]

Re: NBA 2K18 Offensive Tendencies, AI Execution & Motion Blog From Da_Czar

In the last years i found the behaviour of the AI after defensive rebounds quite unrealistic:

- the rebounder almost had "superhuman" court awareness. The outlet pass - sometimes all the way to the halfcourt line - came in an instant (without turning around. Rebounder seems to have eyes on his back). That led to "over-fastbreaking" - the cpu would always run, would have numbers a lot of the times, and force the issue on offense.

I have read that defenders in 2k18 can only intercept a pass when their eyes are on the action - thats great.

But that should hold true for defensive rebounders as well. 9 out of 10 times the defensive rebounder is facing the own basket when grabbing the ball. In order to access the situation he really has to turn and find his teammates. This process isn't in the game - but it would be soooo vital! Exactly this second (turning, looking up the court, finding an open teammate, passing) gives the defense important time to get back.

The gameplay footage of 2k18 shows this legacy issue again. Maybe the devs could look into that. For me it is really annoying. After every of my misses the AI runs up the court - assisted by an superhuman outlet pass- and really forces a fast shot. Because of that i don't see many executed plays after misses.

Ok. That wouldn't be in my area but i will pass it on to the team. It could be because when they force him to turn around the transition opportunity is no longer there so It could be a hack of sorts to ensure transition is not delayed in an unnatural way.


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[Da_Czar]

Re: NBA 2K18 Offensive Tendencies, AI Execution & Motion Blog From Da_Czar

Another question:



I know that there are hundreds of plays in the game. But when i play the AI i see maybe half a dozen plays the cpu uses again and again and again. Not much variety at all.



How will 2k18 play in that regard?

It all depends on who's hot and how many plays they have and how many players on your team have the same play-type. You will have to tell me if you experience the same issue.

If this is a problem we may have to write something specific but getting into the play level for play calls is hairy stuff.

If a team has 3 3point shooters and 4 3 point plays it will be difficult to see play variation.

[Da_Czar]

NBA 2K18 Offensive Tendencies, AI Execution & Motion Blog From Da_Czar

You used to be able to manually assign plays, but since you cannot anymore, I'm not a fan of this system. If I am looking to run a play for Steph, I don't want to see Klay's plays...


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If you want to assign plays to players you are going to see dramatically less plays per playbook because you have to store them some-how and keep track of the order. That is where the difficulty comes in.

That is why I designed the plays using play-types as a container this fixed a bunch of issues for us. Also you are only going to be able to assign a max of probably 8 plays per player.

My design gives you unlimited amount of plays per player ( limited by playbook size) and still allows you to narrow which plays are assigned by play-type.

Each year we have added more play-types to assist with this.

In game development there are no perfect solutions. To get something you have to give up something. We could make that change but you would have the issues I described above.


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[raiderphantom]

Re: NBA 2K18 Offensive Tendencies, AI Execution & Motion Blog From Da_Czar

No, playbooks are still at 50 plays per team.

I'm confused about the situation you presented. If you have them both set to the same primary play-types thier plays would be the exact same.

Either the play branches and it is running a play for one and it branches to the other. Or you have a play that incorrectly says it is for the sg when it is actually for the sf.

But plays called are called by position and according to the play-type so technically what your describing shouldn't be possible unless it is an issue I described above or you have auto plays on or some other setting.

And we would have to look at the specific plays. Especially this year with Flow tech calling a play for a player is almost an old fashion notion. You are calling an action and there are several possible end action scenarios that could play out depending on defensive coverage and adjustments.

So calling a play for someone this year is no guarantee they actually get the shot especially with the new iso tendencies and flow tech.


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Appreciate the response. I thought it might be clearer if I posted a video so I'll show you what I mean.

In the clip you'll see the 3rd page of Melo's plays has an ISO for the PG and an ISO for the SG. So when the CPU is calling plays regardless if Melo has a 99 touch tendency when they call a play for him they will go to his plays and instead select a play that is not going to be called for Carmelo but instead(sometimes) run a play for a guard. https://youtu.be/fJ1oScWOSDA


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[Da_Czar]

Re: NBA 2K18 Offensive Tendencies, AI Execution & Motion Blog From Da_Czar

Aight fam I am ramping up for release and will not be as active in this thread. Demo is out and yall should have enough to pour through here in my responses to get you through next week. #SimNation


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