How to make players play like themselves - The ATD Guide

[CelticLG]

Hi guys. Many users have asked me for advice on how I've edited the tendencies in my various rosters in the attempt of getting players to play the same way they would in real life. I preferred to create a discussion in order to be public, and to be able to confront each other, and improve the game together.

I've decided to make this little thread, for those interested, which will contain a series of extracts from my "Tendencies guide" that will be released with my roster shortly: https://forums.operationsports.com/f...il-roster.html

As you know, the default 2K roster has huge problems with tendecies. Many times they are random values (like high stepback or eurostep numbers assigned to big men who have never tried such a movement in their entire life), many times they are dated (like Blake Griffin's alley-oop and dunk tendencies) and other times they're only superficial values (like the 0 in stepback tendency for Doncic at the beginning of the year, or the current 0 in spin layup tendency gave to Siakam) and much more.

Spacing, shot selection, drive and kick, transition and all the general game flow seem very far from the game of basketball we see every day.

Luckly, at the same time 2K gives us all (or almost all) the tools to fix the problems.

In this thread I will try to talk, with a message every 1/2 days, about how to improve the tendencies in order to create a game experience as close to reality as possible.

Let's begin

[CelticLG]

Part 1: Dish to open man tendency


I'd like to start with this one because in my opinion it's one of the most important tendencies to edit if you want to have better gameplay.

With the default roster the ball movement is pretty slow and static, you see very few drive-and-kick (this year particularly) and it's very difficult to see "the extra-pass".

The main problem is the assignment of low dish values to the main ball-handlers and passers of the teams.

We'll take the Sixers and their dish to open man tendency as an example.

(Players in bold are ball-handlers)

Burks Alec (20)
Embiid Joel (20)
Harris Tobias (30)
Horford Al (45)
Korkmaz Furkan (50)
Milton Shake (70)
Neto Raul (60)
O'Quinn Kyle (30)
Pelle Norvel (73)
Richardson Josh (25)
Robinson III Glenn (15)
Scott Mike (40)
Shayok Marial (45)
Simmons Ben (50)
Smith Zhaire (45)
Thybulle Matisse (30)

Ball handlers have an average value of 45 dish to open man tendency, team average is 40.

Sixers are one of the best teams in assists per game this season, so we need to raise this value.

You can use many reference statistics, such as average passes, assists, secondary assists and more. The value that I absolutely prefer and I think more precise is the potential assist, which does not depend so much on the quality of teammates as the actual assist.

Another statistic we'll need are the minutes played (I usually use all players with at least 200 minutes played the season, but in this particular case I have included all the players), so that we can calculate the potential assists divided for each minute.

Once the value is calculated, we can multiply it by 250, and round it up to the next multiple of 5, obtaining the new tendencies.

Now we can compare the new and old values of the Sixers' players (ball-handlers are marked in yellow)

Conclusions:

- average tendency is higher
- average ball handler tendency is way higher (+42%), this will lead to more passes and drive-and-kicks, improving overall ball movement
- Simmons tedency is 100, among players with at least 1500 minutes he's 5th in the league for potential assists per minute, behind only LeBron, Rubio, Luka and Trae. At the same time we will have to balance his drive, attack strong and driving layup/dunk tendencies, in order to have variety between passes and shots during drive to the basket situations.
- Burks is handling the ball more often than in the past two seasons
- shooters like Korkmaz normally have a low dish tendency (not 50 for sure) because... they just shot
- Norvel Pelle is a big man more similar to Hassan Whiteside than Nikola Jokic, how could you give him 73 dish tendency?

Hoping it might have helped, let me know what you think.

[Permatron]

Great breakdown! Appreciate the work.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Vedreanu]

I really like this idea, please keep the post flowing!!

[Vedreanu]

Quick question:

Have you edited Miami and Milwaukee rosters yet?
Because, I've let them play (CPU vs CPU) and so far I've seen very little three pointers.

Also, Robinson hasnt shot once at the basket in 11 minutes he played so far. Its strange, eventhough I can see he has his 3p tends set pretty high.


These are the stats from the half time :
(off to sleep, the game is streaming on YT )

[Real2KInsider]

Quote: Originally Posted by CelticLG

Part 1: Dish to open man tendency

I would like to clarify something. This tendency does NOT work independently of itself.
It works hand in hand WITH the Attack Strong (Finish) tendency.

50 Attack / 50 Dish
75 Attack / 75 Dish

These players dish rates would function exactly the same from a drive & kick perspective.
The 75 Dish player would not pass more on drives.

Likewise...

50 Attack / 20 Dish
80 Attack / 50 Dish

These players would also pass out at similar rates. The game cares about the 30-point gap, not the total value.

It is unintuitive, but that's how it's programmed.

Quote:

We'll take the Sixers and their dish to open man tendency as an example. (Players in bold are ball-handlers) Burks Alec (20) Embiid Joel (20) Harris Tobias (30) Horford Al (45) Korkmaz Furkan (50) Milton Shake (70) Neto Raul (60) O'Quinn Kyle (30) Pelle Norvel (73) Richardson Josh (25) Robinson III Glenn (15) Scott Mike (40) Shayok Marial (45) Simmons Ben (50) Smith Zhaire (45) Thybulle Matisse (30)

As such, the posted data is incomplete / inaccurate.

Attack / Dish (Net)

POINT GUARDS
Simmons: 50/50 (0)
Neto: 15/60 (+45)

SHOOTING GUARDS
Richardson: 45/25 (-20)
Burks: 50/20 (-30)
Thybulle: 65/30 (-35)
Milton: 30/70 (+40)
Smith: 15/45 (+30)

SMALL FORWARDS
Harris: 65/35 (-30)
Korkmaz: 25/50 (+25)
Robinson: 35/15 (-20)

POWER FORWARDS
Horford: 65/45 (-20)
Scott: 60/40 (-20)

CENTERS
Embiid: 75/20 (-55)
O'Quinn: 65/30 (-35)
Pelle: 30/73 (+43)

Like you, I'm in favor of raising Dish across the board for the vast majority of players.
However, the solution is not as cut & dry as it would otherwise seem.
In some cases editing a player's Attack tendency (or both) would be the correct course of action.

Quote: Originally Posted by CelticLG

shooters like Korkmaz normally have a low dish tendency (not 50 for sure) because... they just shot

This is an example where it might be correct to increase his Attack tendency.

Quote:

- Norvel Pelle is a big man more similar to Hassan Whiteside than Nikola Jokic, how could you give him 73 dish tendency?

I just want to clarify that every G-Leaguer/two-way (and even drafted players) have their tendencies copy/pasted from an existing NBA player or template. At the rate these players get added to the game nowadays it would be impossible to keep up otherwise. No player has their tendencies done from scratch.

As an example, Kyle Alexander, Ray Spalding, Alen Smailagic all have the same tendencies.

Speed is more important than accuracy in this regard. These players get added to the game the moment they make their debuts. The vast majority of the time, these players never even take the court in-game. It only becomes an issue if any of them take a major leap in ability (at which point they'd need a revision due to a reformed playstyle anyway).

I do not know the exact process 2K goes through when they add a player to the game but they definitely don't consult whomever the Tendency specialist is.

[CelticLG]

Man, really appreciated all the breakdowns, but can you group all messages into 1/2/3 (maybe with spoilers, etc)? If we can avoid 10 messages in a row I think it's better, in order to keep the thread clean. Thanks

[Vedreanu]

Hey, CelticLG, how do you comment (3p) stats from the above game with your roster?

I am using 3p boosted sliders.