Porzingod's In-Depth Sim Engine Analysis: Part I

[Porzingod]

Quote: Originally Posted by ffaacc03

This is why Total Sim Control was such a great addition when it first appeared ... its approach seemed to treat on court and sim stats variables separatedly, there was a variable to control the on court pace and one to control the sim stats possesions per game (pace) for teams, etc, etc. Independently of sliders, this should be the way to go, to have separate variables so we can address sim stat engine defficiencies with variables that dont affect/correlate the on court experience ... for the editors that do value sim stats, has been all about making compromises (less worthy road), wich can be avoided by retaking the approach that total sim control seemed to bring ... I remeber how much praise did the feature received back then and how hopefull the editors here were of the base/vision it set and its possible improvements. At least, in this sole thing (thus I love the new related features, albeit some need tweaking and more consistency in its function), I found the new system presented on new/current gen more restrictive than that of the prior gen. With such approach fully implemented, I believe we could even account for exceptions to the rule without any worries. Another thing I liked was the 1-100 approach on variables that you could set, talking more specifically about the variables that affect team stats, such as ppg & ppga, while the results were barely perceiveable from point to point it produced results a lot more broader than the very few that are currently achieveable, plus the correlation with the sim engine has now been reduced greatly, maybe to prevent the user from "braking" the on court experience as they are now more related than ever. Hopefully Leftos/Simballer and company can see value in this (having more options for the user) and can have the time (within all the great stuff they add) to alter it and implement this so the course is retaken (have variables that separatedly affect each, on court and sim stats) and we can enjoy the best of both worlds: gameplay & sim stats.

This would be nice, but IMHO it really would be better to just build a sim engine that produces reasonably realistic results. Building a sim engine that yields realistic statistical results is not nearly as great an engineering challenge as building the core real-time gameplay engine with graphics and animations and bells and whistles, it's just that it doesn't seem to be much of a priority for the dev team, likely because they don't think it will help them sell more copies compared to adding more marketable features.

The same goes for roster ratings. While it's nice that I can edit my roster to yield realistic sim stats in most areas, I'd really prefer if it didn't require hours and hours of work to achieve that outcome. Whoever does the ratings either does not give any consideration to how the sim engine will apply those ratings, or does not know. Changing that, in my view, is the easiest path to better sim results.

2k15 is so close to true greatness, and other aspects of the game do make significant strides every year. It's tantalizing to see this aspect mostly at a virtual standstill- as I said, the issue with blocks has been there since at least 2k12.

[Real2KInsider]

Quote: Originally Posted by Porzingod

It's possible to view a player's ORB% directly in the player scouting tab of MyLeague or MyGM, and with maxed ratings players seem to max out at around at an ORB% of around 10-11. With my scales in place Drummond gets an 11.6 ORB% , meaning that for the sim engine to get his ORB% right he would need a rating roughly in the 150's. Even in this weak era of offensive rebounding, at least a dozen players will be off the charts every season by that scale. With the official roster he gets around 9.4%, a bit over half his real life production.

2K has a long way to go at generating accurate advanced stats, which is the predominant reason why I don't concern myself much with the counting stats. It has nothing to do with the rating scales at that point and everything to do with the coding.

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So as you can see when it comes to the sim engine it's not just guys like Drummond or Rodman that are scale breakers- it's also guys like Robin Lopez and Zaza Pachulia!

Lopez and Pachulia are 88-90 by 2K's scale (which I think is reasonable, given that they were 9th/10th in ORB rate). Drummond (116) and DeAndre (106) are the only players who would surpass 99.

ORB% Leaders
2015: Andre Drummond (18.3)
2014: Andre Drummond (17.5)
2013: Reggie Evans (15.5)
2012: Nikola Pekovic (15.8)
2011: DeJuan Blair (14.8)
2010: Kevin Love (14.5)
2009: Kevin Love (15.1)
2008: Jeff Foster (14.9)
2007: Jeff Foster (16.5)
2006: Erick Dampier (17.3)

Over the last 10 years the scale hasn't really been an issue.

Understanding how statistics are generated is paramount.

The reason INDIVIDUAL ORB% is spiking when TEAM ORB% is at an all-time low is teams are going smaller at PF which is creating more rebound opportunities for centers. It should not be lost that DeAndre's career rebound marks on both ends came in tandem with Blake Griffin easily posting the worst rebounding marks of his career.

Rather than adjusting scales (a band-aid) I think what 2K needs to do to EVOLVE the sim engine is expand upon the game's understanding of a possession and how the other players on the court affect that.

1. Give everyone the OREB rating they ought to get on a linear basis, with anyone with an ORB% of over 11 or so getting a 99. This will yield accurate numbers for most poor offensive rebounders (though the worst ones will still be too high since a 25 rating will always yield about 1.0 ORB%). The problem here is that there are a lot of 99's and no separation between a guy like Pachulia and Drummond, who is literally about 50% better at getting offensive rebounds in real life. This also has the effect of distorting team offensive rebounding strength a bit- teams without good offensive rebounders will overperform because the worst rebounders get more than they should, while teams with elite offensive rebounders will relatively underperform because their best rebounders will be much weaker than they should be.

2. Use a scale that tries to preserve the relative strength of rebounders at the top end. Because the top rebounders will still not be able to manage close to their real life numbers, this means that everyone below them will have to be deflated somewhat as well. This has the advantage of coming closer to making the best rebounders stand out more than they otherwise would, and coming closer to preserving the relative offensive rebounding strength of teams.

I went with the second approach, imperfect though it is, but unfortunately the sim engine only leaves us imperfect options.

Quote:

FTA/game is not a good measure here because Westbrook mostly has a healthy Durant all year in a 2k15 simmed seasons, lowering his usage, so I use FTA/FGA.

Was just using Westbrook as an obvious example. IRL James Harden had 800+ FTA and in 2K nobody comes close to that at default. I don't think the game is smart enough to treat drives as more blockable than jumpers, but it would be a great place to start when re-coding given that jumpers are rarely blocked IRL.

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Note that I haven't tweaked anyone's Draw Foul tendency yet, so bringing Westbrook from his current 92 to 100 might just get his FT rate all the way there. On a side note, shouldn't Draw Foul be a rating? It has a huge effect on how good/efficient a player is, not just on his style of play.

Yeah there isn't much reason for it to be a tendency.

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Not necessarily. While having high-assist teammates would have the effect of reducing a player's assist numbers in past 2k iterations, that is no longer the case here. Players seem to put up the assist numbers you'd expect from their pass ratings pretty much regardless of who their teammates are.

Does that mean a team of 99s could average more assists than FGM? Because if so that is obviously not the world's greatest band-aid.


As with blocks, I suspect the sim engine doesn't try to figure out which shots were assisted, but instead just fudges in assist numbers for players based on their passing ratings. I have two rosters using my scales- one for the end of last season, and one incorporating this offseason's player movement. All the other results from my scale that I've posted are using the former roster, to ensure that comparisons to actual numbers from last season's NBA are valid. Here are the assist per 36 minutes numbers for next season's Clippers, in descending order:

10.2 Chris Paul
5.2 Blake Griffin
4.9 Lance Stephenson
3.5 Josh Smith
2.8 Paul Pierce

Quote:

That's true in real life, of course, but as far as the sim engine understands, role in the offense and position are the exact same thing, and in the 2k sim engine position absolutely does dictate assist rate. If you take Chris Paul and force him to play C in the rotation, he'll still put up his 10 APG. If you keep him as a PG and change his natural position to C, his assist numbers are greatly reduced. It is imperfect of course, but my aim here is to figure out what works with the sim engine we have, not the one we wish we had.

When changing him to center, does anyone on the team pick up the assist slack? Would a team of 13 Point-Centers just average 8 APG?

[Real2KInsider]

I would say the overall results leave guards and bigs more balanced than in the stock roster. If you're curious, here are overalls for the top 5 at each position. Bear and mind that I have only touched ratings that affect the sim engine, so shots ratings (both standing and moving) for Close/Med/3pt, Layups, Pass Accuracy/Pass Vision, Steal, Block, and both rebound ratings.


Our top fives are relatively similar, however I've been disappointed by the tiers lower than that. There isn't much separation between an All-Star like Paul Millsap and a journeyman rebound specialist like Thomas Robinson.

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I've known you for a long time (remember the Tactics Ogre forum on GameFAQs about 10-15 years ago?), so I know how difficult any Rashidi praise is to come by. I'm glad you appreciate this stuff, and I'm sure you'll be interested in my findings on how the sim engine handles shot ratings and tendencies when I get around to posting Part II. For what it's worth, if I had a console I would definitely use your roster as a base (though applying my scales to prioritize accurate sim stats).

I might remember you by username. IIRC a lot of people in the TO and OB community got into 2K3 due to it's simulation aspects. FWIW those are the only people who get my username reference.

Quote:

You seem to be more informed about the scales the roster makers use than I am. I do think that a truly complete guide would contained detailed information on both the sim engine stat scales and the ones used in the official rosters. Would you be interested in sharing your information on those scales, or in posting something similar to this describing them for posterity?

Not at this present time.

[BluFu]

For BPG, could lowering the inside shot/layup ratings across the board be a possible/temporary solution? That might be the only thing I haven't quite extensively tested yet in regards to that stat.

Quote: Originally Posted by Rashidi

Does that mean a team of 99s could average more assists than FGM? Because if so that is obviously not the world's greatest band-aid.

Interested in this as well.

[janmagn]

When will you release Part II? I can't wait till I can use them with these

Lähetetty minun ST27i laitteesta Tapatalkilla

[Porzingod]

Quote: Originally Posted by Rashidi

Over the last 10 years the scale hasn't really been an issue.

I think we're basically saying more or less the same thing here. I haven't been saying that the scale 2k uses to come up with the official ratings is bad. It's more or less fine. It's problematic that they don't actually stick to their own scale so much of the time, but that's another matter.

What I've been saying is that the scale the sim engine uses, or rather, the way the sim engine applies the ratings to generate stats, needs significant work, and it seems like you agree with me on that basic premise.

Quote: Originally Posted by Rashidi

The reason INDIVIDUAL ORB% is spiking when TEAM ORB% is at an all-time low is teams are going smaller at PF which is creating more rebound opportunities for centers. It should not be lost that DeAndre's career rebound marks on both ends came in tandem with Blake Griffin easily posting the worst rebounding marks of his career. Rather than adjusting scales (a band-aid) I think what 2K needs to do to EVOLVE the sim engine is expand upon the game's understanding of a possession and how the other players on the court affect that.

Of course. Griffin was a 12 RPG guy early and his career, and he didn't forget how to rebound. It's obvious that most of the huge gap between his numbers and Jordan's are an effect of Griffin taking on more of a high post playmaker role and ceding the paint to Jordan. But the sim engine doesn't have the complexity to encompass that.

I, too, wish that the sim engine would be evolved so as to become both more complex and more accurate. I suspect that the previous assist model, where elite PG's struggled to reach 7 APG, was actually significantly more complex, and did try to figure out which shots were assisted in some depth. It also had the disadvantage of being woefully inaccurate/unrealistic. Personally, I would rather have a simpler engine that produces realistic stats rather than a more complex one that fails completely at that. Given the small amount of dev time/attention that seems to go into the sim engine (we're going on year five of the blocks issue!), I suspect those are the only options we're going to have. The most appealing thing 2k could do for me as a customer is say, "Ok guys, next year we're going to have no big new features and pour all our attention and time into getting these little things like the sim engine right and perfecting what is already there, and/or bringing back great stuff we used to have like Create-a-Team!" I recognize, however, that on that front I am a tiny minority of the market and will not be catered to.

Quote: Originally Posted by Rashidi

Does that mean a team of 99s could average more assists than FGM? Because if so that is obviously not the world's greatest band-aid.

An interesting question. Let's see if I can make it happen by pushing the extremes. I took the Sixers and gave them a 5-man rotation of all PG's with 99 PASS. To minimize field goals made, all have shot ratings of all 25's, and all shot tendencies zeroes except 3 point tendency at 100. To maximize assist chances Draw Foul tendency is also at 0 for all.

This team (let's call them the Suxers) averaged 45.5 PPG, shot 12.8% from the field, make 937 FG's and had 689 assists. All the starters averaged about 2 APG. I suspect the sim engine has a sanity check preventing you from having more than a certain percentage of team shots assisted. Tried a similar test with the Clippers- made all the starters PG's with 99 PASS, but kept shot ratings the same. They all put up around 5.5 AST/36.

It looks like the sim engine will produce assists in line with the numbers I posted, but starts scaling players' numbers back evenly so that you can't have more than 70-75% of your made field goals assisted. For actual NBA teams this shouldn't really ever be an issue though, and this effect can only be seen at weird extremes like this.

Quote: Originally Posted by Rashidi

When changing him to center, does anyone on the team pick up the assist slack? Would a team of 13 Point-Centers just average 8 APG?

Nope, nobody picks up the slack. It appears that the system will always produce roughly the predicted amount of assists unless too high a proportion of field goals made would be assisted, in which case everyone is scaled down a bit.

[Porzingod]

Quote: Originally Posted by Rashidi

Our top fives are relatively similar, however I've been disappointed by the tiers lower than that. There isn't much separation between an All-Star like Paul Millsap and a journeyman rebound specialist like Thomas Robinson.

Do you mean in your roster, or in a roster using my scales? From what I've seen on your blog, Millsap's rating in your roster seems fine to me. With 2k's formula weighted the way it is for bigs, guys who are excellent rebounders on both ends like Robinson is will always be a bit high on the OVR rating.

Quote: Originally Posted by Rashidi

I might remember you by username. IIRC a lot of people in the TO and OB community got into 2K3 due to it's simulation aspects. FWIW those are the only people who get my username reference.

Is that so? I only knew of you. It's always seemed like a weird coincidence to me that there should be anyone else who's a huge fan of TO and basketball. I don't play any other sports games, but from what I've heard simulation aspects tend to be handled better in other sports than basketball. Why do you suppose the community got into NBA 2k and not, say, football manager or Madden?

What was your take on the remake, just out of curiosity?

[supaswagga22]

is this roster on 2kshare?