NBA 2K20 Simulation Basketball Wiki

[youALREADYknow]

Quote: Originally Posted by MrWrestling3

Yes,I meant the reaching foul slider;I guess I read so much about tendencies in this thread that I wrote the wrong thing. The best way I can explain it is that the foul sliders kind of work as a team on defense.The CPU takes these into consideration during gameplay and will tend toward the option (steal/strip vs contest/shot block,etc.) which is less likely to generate the foul.Think of it as the CPU coach telling his players "Hey guys, the refs are calling this foul tonight, so do this other thing on defense instead".

My testing has found a similar effect, but I don’t think you are right about the reason being fouls or the foul sliders. I’ve found that the CPU defender will perform the action that is most likely to generate success based on the defensive sliders, ball handler ability, and badges equipped. Haven’t found any correlation with only avoiding fouls and the relative level of foul sliders, but I have seen that each type of foul slider going up/down triggers more of those context animations (regardless of whether the foul is called).

Here’s what I mean by generate success...

Raise the Shot Defense Gather/Release & Contact Frequency sliders to 100. You will see defenders going for body up shot blocks that have 0 Blocking tendencies and low Block attributes. The AI knows they have a better chance of getting blocks with more contact on drives so they attempt more blocks (also leading to more shooting fouls on drives if shooting foul sliders are at a decent level).

Drop Ball Handling & Attempt Steal sliders to 1. You wouldn’t expect to see reach-ins, but defenders will reach more with a perceived “loose” ball handler in the hopes of getting steals. Again, the AI knows the advantage.

This also plays out the other way where ball handlers will try to Iso drive on mismatches with poor On-Ball Defenders or post iso on poor post defenders. This is a big reason I keep defensive attribute sliders higher than offensive ones to encourage more ball movement and fewer iso action from players without those play types.

I see a ton of illegal screen, loose ball, and off-ball holding calls in my CPU/CPU games. It’s mostly because of mismatches in Badges & slider levels that promote contact. 2K20 forces you to over-use badges to trigger context animations. You usually need to have a badge on either side of the matchup.

Off-Ball Holding Badges: Slippery Off-Ball vs Off-Ball Pest. I usually see this called when a Gold/HOF OBP is matched up with a player who has any level of SOB.
Off-Ball Holding Sliders: Jump Shot Defense Strength (Gather) at a higher level will tell defenders to play shooters closer at the point of off-ball/on-ball screens and jukes/moves to get shooters open.
Illegal Screen Badges: Brick Wall vs Pick Dodger. I usually see this called when a Silver/Gold/HOF PD runs through a screen from a player with no Brick Wall badge.
Illegal Screen Sliders: Illegal Screen Frequency

[MrWrestling3]

Quote: Originally Posted by youALREADYknow

My testing has found a similar effect, but I don’t think you are right about the reason being fouls or the foul sliders. I’ve found that the CPU defender will perform the action that is most likely to generate success based on the defensive sliders, ball handler ability, and badges equipped. Haven’t found any correlation with only avoiding fouls and the relative level of foul sliders, but I have seen that each type of foul slider going up/down triggers more of those context animations (regardless of whether the foul is called). Here’s what I mean by generate success... Raise the Shot Defense Gather/Release & Contact Frequency sliders to 100. You will see defenders going for body up shot blocks that have 0 Blocking tendencies and low Block attributes. The AI knows they have a better chance of getting blocks with more contact on drives so they attempt more blocks (also leading to more shooting fouls on drives if shooting foul sliders are at a decent level). Drop Ball Handling & Attempt Steal sliders to 1. You wouldn’t expect to see reach-ins, but defenders will reach more with a perceived “loose” ball handler in the hopes of getting steals. Again, the AI knows the advantage. This also plays out the other way where ball handlers will try to Iso drive on mismatches with poor On-Ball Defenders or post iso on poor post defenders. This is a big reason I keep defensive attribute sliders higher than offensive ones to encourage more ball movement and fewer iso action from players without those play types. I see a ton of illegal screen, loose ball, and off-ball holding calls in my CPU/CPU games. It’s mostly because of mismatches in Badges & slider levels that promote contact. 2K20 forces you to over-use badges to trigger context animations. You usually need to have a badge on either side of the matchup. Off-Ball Holding Badges: Slippery Off-Ball vs Off-Ball Pest. I usually see this called when a Gold/HOF OBP is matched up with a player who has any level of SOB. Off-Ball Holding Sliders: Jump Shot Defense Strength (Gather) at a higher level will tell defenders to play shooters closer at the point of off-ball/on-ball screens and jukes/moves to get shooters open. Illegal Screen Badges: Brick Wall vs Pick Dodger. I usually see this called when a Silver/Gold/HOF PD runs through a screen from a player with no Brick Wall badge. Illegal Screen Sliders: Illegal Screen Frequency

I have had mostly similar results with what I have tested as far as sliders and triggering animations; when it comes to foul calls I have found that the fouls sliders have some effect.Now this is not a major game changing effect, rather it is more like a slight weighting effect that is able to goose a few calls one way or the other.

This is what I have noticed:

-Adjusting the Over The Back Foul slider to higher levels there are less instances of instances of CPU players who are out of position or boxed out attempting to jump for the ball.

-Blocking Foul Slider has a small effect on how tightly defenders guard ball handlers;at higher levels they move their feet a bit more,at lower levels they try to hip ride more often.This mostly affects players who do not have the Clamps badge or only have it on Bronze.

-Loose Ball Foul Slider has a small effect on box out battles; at higher levels there are slightly less push/shove/swim animations from boxed out CPU players that do not have the Worm badge.

[youALREADYknow]

Quote: Originally Posted by MrWrestling3

I have mad mostly similar results with what I have tested as far as sliders and triggering animations; when it comes to foul calls I have found that the fouls sliders have some effect.Now this is not a major game changing effect, rather it is more like a slight weighting effect that is able to goose a few calls one way or the other. This is what I have noticed: -Adjusting the Over The Back Foul slider to higher levels there are less instances of instances of CPU players who are out of position or boxed out attempting to jump for the ball. -Blocking Foul Slider has a small effect on how tightly defenders guard ball handlers;at higher levels they move their feet a bit more,at lower levels they try to hip ride more often.This mostly affects players who do not have the Clamps badge or only have it on Bronze. -Loose Ball Foul Slider has a small effect on box out battles; at higher levels there are slightly less push/shove/swim animations from boxed out CPU players that do not have the Worm badge.

Agree with all of this! These foul sliders are giving the AI guidance on what context animations have a better chance of success.

If we could document all of the relationships, then I'm sure we could come up with some good suggestions for the community on combinations to get results (more/less fouls of each type).

[MrWrestling3]

Quote: Originally Posted by youALREADYknow

Agree with all of this! These foul sliders are giving the AI guidance on what context animations have a better chance of success. If we could document all of the relationships, then I'm sure we could come up with some good suggestions for the community on combinations to get results (more/less fouls of each type).

For sure! Just at a guess, I would say we would have to establish a solid baseline for Foul Sliders(which I think is the easier part),then go into the roster, change just 1 or 2 things,test and document,then repeat.A long process to be sure, but in the long run it should yield a chart of how everything ties together that we can use to dial in the gameplay.

[Vedreanu]

Quote: Originally Posted by youALREADYknow

Attack vs Dish to Open Man is a more important relationship than Attack/Drive. I agree with you that having the Dish/Pass tendency higher than Attack allows the CPU to play more realistically and keeps the ball moving in half court sets. I don’t set them based on their relationship, but my scales for Dish to Open are 50-99.

Man, I could swear tendencies do not behave on a linear scale. At least those most important ones. I think its either that or ACE's thresholds for various on-court decisions/playcalling are to sensitive, which is also very possible.

The best example is setting anyone to ATTACK at 60-65, even 55. You could see him going like a capricorn towards the rim, almost never thinking about passing the ball. At least with my sliders (OBdefense 90, ballhandling 40-50). And this is where the DISH almost makes no importance!


On the other hand, when I lower the FINNISH tendency to area of 50-ish, you could see the behaviour being drastically different. Then the player usually stops at the first obstacle in the paint and looks for a free man to pass the ball. THIS is much more similar to todays NBA, if you ask me. Just take a look at these stats:

https://stats.nba.com/players/drives...E_PASSES&dir=1

Players in reality pass the ball A LOT when driving to the basket, but most of those passes arent for the open man at the three or similar, which you can observe by the value AST% which is rather low. Around 10%.



When setting FINNISH in the area of 45-50 player really behaves much differently. But do you know what was the biggest game changer for me in all my experiments I've done so far regarding drive+kick?



Its the DEFENSIVE SETTINGS!!
I really tried all permuations to determine what was the factor that made the biggest difference and it was setting all the options so to congest the paint as much as possible, so a lot of open men situations could appear!

And it really is groundbreaking, it works well for me even with very low BALL HANDLING slider, which is great for all the REACHING FOULS!

For a moment I actually though I finally found the golden cut, but, nope... No matter all the drive and kick, still the low ball handling slider just slows the game to much and low scoring becomes the new reality, which is what I dont want.


I might actually try and get deeper into the badges and non-shooting fouls experiment, you certainly got me interested with that. But, my main concern there is wheather it would distort the teams' strenght balance to much by applying those badges all over the board?



P.S. Thank you both for great insights and posts here!

[MrWrestling3]

Quote: Originally Posted by Vedreanu

Man, I could swear tendencies do not behave on a linear scale. At least those most important ones. I think its either that or ACE's thresholds for various on-court decisions/playcalling are to sensitive, which is also very possible. The best example is setting anyone to ATTACK at 60-65, even 55. You could see him going like a capricorn towards the rim, almost never thinking about passing the ball. At least with my sliders (OBdefense 90, ballhandling 40-50). And this is where the DISH almost makes no importance! On the other hand, when I lower the FINNISH tendency to area of 50-ish, you could see the behaviour being drastically different. Then the player usually stops at the first obstacle in the paint and looks for a free man to pass the ball. THIS is much more similar to todays NBA, if you ask me. Just take a look at these stats: https://stats.nba.com/players/drives...E_PASSES&dir=1 Players in reality pass the ball A LOT when driving to the basket, but most of those passes arent for the open man at the three or similar, which you can observe by the value AST% which is rather low. Around 10%. When setting FINNISH in the area of 45-50 player really behaves much differently. But do you know what was the biggest game changer for me in all my experiments I've done so far regarding drive+kick? Its the DEFENSIVE SETTINGS!! I really tried all permuations to determine what was the factor that made the biggest difference and it was setting all the options so to congest the paint as much as possible, so a lot of open men situations could appear! And it really is groundbreaking, it works well for me even with very low BALL HANDLING slider, which is great for all the REACHING FOULS! For a moment I actually though I finally found the golden cut, but, nope... No matter all the drive and kick, still the low ball handling slider just slows the game to much and low scoring becomes the new reality, which is what I dont want. I might actually try and get deeper into the badges and non-shooting fouls experiment, you certainly got me interested with that. But, my main concern there is wheather it would distort the teams' strenght balance to much by applying those badges all over the board? P.S. Thank you both for great insights and posts here!

Now this is making me wonder how it relates to the charging foul issue we've been struggling with forever... could it be charging foul slider + Tendencies + Draw Foul Attribute coming together to cause a complex issue?

Low Take Charge Tendency causing other actions to always take priority.

Incorrect Attack, Drive, and Finish Tendencies making charges less effective due to ball handlers prioritizing avoiding contact.

Charging Foul slider + Draw Foul attribute making players less likely to attempt taking a charge due to reduced likelihood of success as compared to other actions.

[Vedreanu]

I dunno man, I am just tired of all of it. Seems like there is no balanced way around. Tried a match with low ball-handling and a lot of silver badges for off-ball pest and brick wall. But with drive/kick optimized tendencies...

And the gameplay was once again just to fast and low amount of non-shooters appeared, even the illegal screens where damn low.

Maybe it would be smarter if we invest this energy in something else or make an online petition to the devs to do something about this issue.

[youALREADYknow]

Quote: Originally Posted by Vedreanu

I dunno man, I am just tired of all of it. Seems like there is no balanced way around. Tried a match with low ball-handling and a lot of silver badges for off-ball pest and brick wall. But with drive/kick optimized tendencies... And the gameplay was once again just to fast and low amount of non-shooters appeared, even the illegal screens where damn low. Maybe it would be smarter if we invest this energy in something else or make an online petition to the devs to do something about this issue.

I legit don’t have the issues you experience and my Ball Handling slider is at 70. I’ve tried making gameplay work with Ball Handling at 0 and moved away from it for a lot of reasons.

Not saying this game is fixable by sliders (it’s not, core issues are there) but you seem to be fighting certain battles that can be fixed.

Most of the action in this game comes down to playbooks, play types, defensive settings, and movement/contact sliders. The rest is about player style or animation selection. I’d focus on getting core gameplay right before tweaking for fouls or sim stats. I’ve been consistently at 12-17 fouls per game in CPU/CPU without anything close to ideal foul sliders. At least 3-4 illegal screen calls per game, 1-2 loose ball fouls, and lucky enough to see a shooting foul on a jumpshot once in a while (not every game though).