I'm here for you RandomBrother! I saw your other posts and apologize for not getting to them - rEAnimator & I are reading all the time and replying when we can...we were both online discussing alley oops at 2:30 this morning, so rest assured if we're not posting on OS we're probably improving the game.
ImInUrBase is the man for online features and he'll be talking about what we're doing this year in the online realm.
On to the ratings. I think there is a bit of a misconception emerging based on the hype that's been released up until this point. I'm referring to the idea that because there is more user control, the game is more of an arcade experience. rEAnimator made a solid post in the physics thread about the different types of sim experiences and what we're trying to achieve with Elite this year.
Physical attributes will be much more of a factor than they were in the past. The main focus of the physics changes this year have been in how players get around the court, and to be a true physical representation of this, we had to factor in height, weight speed and all the other things that affect how guys move and interact.
For more abstract ratings like 'offensive post footwork', in previous iterations, when we were playing out a two man scenario, this could easily be factored in when you had two canned animations with fixed outcomes. For example, when two guys were posting up on ball and a second defender came in to trap, it would enter a three man trap scenario. If the ball carrier didn't pass out in time, the ball would pop out. The timer would be controlled by some ratings. Thus, if the ratings related to how when the ball would pop out in this scenario, it would have a big impact on the outcomes, at times seeming imbalanced.
This year when the same defender comes over to trap, he is no longer tied to the ball carrier and the primary defender other than by proximity and the knowledge that he's double teaming. His hands will come up, but you can still contest, steal, and move around freely with the left stick. As such, his ratings for blocks, steals, weight & height will be what is deciding the outcome of the trap, not an abstract rating that had to be invented to match some artifical scenario that we created.
The end result is less confusing ratings that you're not sure what they accomplish, so you can focus more on the concrete ratings that make sense.
I'm not knocking previous iterations of Live (as you may have read I've worked on live for quite a while), but it's the new physics engine that allows us this new level of control.