NBA Elite 11 Blog: Real Physics

[rEAnimator]

Quote: Originally Posted by Muzyk23

hey reanimator..was it really necessary to invent new controls system? I mean Live 10 had a lot of 'suck in' moments but I believe control was its brightest spot..Now I see I was wrong thinking that what new EA Sports basketball title needed were things like more animations and better quality of them, signature stuff all over the place, getting rid of or fixing some nuances like 'suck in' effect, poor blocking, rebounding, stealing of the ball, poor defensive system, giving wieght to the players. I'm absolutely not judging the end product or your vision but my point is why focusing on control when other things were really broken.

The only thing you mentioned that we didn't put a lot of effort into was "signature stuff all over the place", but like I said, we haven't taken away from what Live '10 had and we have added more player differentiation. It just wasn't the focus.

I think I've gone into enough detail in this thread and others for you to see how we're addressing the " 'suck in' effect, poor blocking, rebounding, stealing of the ball, poor defensive system, giving wieght to the players".

But to your first question: "was it really necessary to invent new controls system?"

I believe this was absolutely critical to making Elite a really great sports game. Shooting in basketball games in the past have been a dice roll where the probability of success is influenced by ratings and position on the court.

In Elite, shooting will be skill based and the difficulty of the shot will be influenced by ratings and position on the court.

In may sound like a subtle difference, but the difference is actually quite significant and changes the entire feeling of playing the game.

Imagine yourself playing a game where you're down by 2 points with 10 seconds left on the clock. You bring the ball up the court and get the ball to your best 3 point shooter who is tightly guarded.

In games that don't have skill based shooting, this is where your involvement ends. You've done all you can do, you take the shot and you know you have maybe a 5% chance of scoring (or whatever number the game calculates for you). You hope for the best, and wait to see if the ball will go in or not.

In Elite 11, if you get the ball to the same guy you'll get a shot that will be pretty difficult. But you know with certainty that it is possible to hit the shot. It's on you to execute well enough to score the game winning point.

In the first example, if you miss you chalk it up to bad luck and hope that maybe next time you take that shot it will go in.

In Elite 11, if you miss that shot you know it was your fault and your fault alone. You know that if you practice, or if you're more composed next time you'll be able to make the shot.

In the first example, if you hit the shot, you know you got lucky.

In Elite 11, if you hit the shot you know you earned it, and that feeling of accomplishment is quite real. It's the closest thing you'll get to playing the real sport through a video game.

That's why we needed to change the controls. We wanted the outcome of your actions to be based on you, and the difficulty of executing those actions to be based on real life basketball.

No more random used to decide the outcome of user actions. Period.

In order to accomplish this we needed to rework the shot controls completely, and I'm really happy with what we came up with.

Everything else fell into place around that.

Hopefully that explains our choices.

[dvir10]

Quote: Originally Posted by rEAnimator

Rest assured that everyone won't act and play the same. Far from it. We have some really amazing AI tech that hasn't been announced yet that I think you guys will really like that was put in specifically for AI behaviors. All I'm saying is we did not focus on individualizing through animations. You still have all the sig anims from last year and effort put in on individualizing behaviors of AI players. Our focus on the animation side was control and physics. But there are many aspects of a players abilities and behaviors that differentiate him in Elite.

so there aren't any new sig anims??
does this mean that kobe sig shot is the same??? because lest year, his shot wasn't even close.

[NoTiCe_O]

Good Explanation rEAnimator, I've realized this for a while, the fact that skill makes the difference jut puts this game in its own area, alot of people think you guys shooting control is like 2k's when really the only similar thing is that you use the stick.

I been sayin this and i continue, I hope that this game really differentiates the good from the bad, and when you play online you can tell the skill difference between the higher ranked players and the lower ones. It seems like exploits won't control who wins in this game, an with physics you cant learn the animation, you actually have to learn the game.

[Muzyk23]

Thanks for answering and explaining.

[Piccaso]

It seems like exploits won't control who wins in this game, an with physics you cant learn the animation, you actually have to learn the game.[/quote]

[NoTiCe_O]

Yea, I cant wait to try it .. It a breath of fresh air for basketball gaming, I'm a 95% online player and anything that brings more competition while making it balanced and skill based at the same time i good with me ..

[Jonesy]

Pretty interesting blog / read. I think it has the 'potential' to be fantastic and is the way going forward in the long run ie games being physics based as opposed to animation driven.

It's just the fact that it's going to be very bloody difficult to get right is my main concern. I sure hope the EA devs are putting some serious Q and A sessions into this game with real unbiased gamers because it has the potential to be superb and just as equally has the potential to be a bug filled, herky jerky mess. I really can't wait to try it out for myself once the demo drops and see it for myself.

[navi24]

i absolutely agree and welcome the idea of redoing the controls, because it asked for it, in past games if u press the steal button the A.I chooses which hand to use. with the new controls it seperates the upper and lower body, u can choose which hand to steal with and lets u adjust in mid air wether is switching hands to attack the rim or to lean towards the ball for rebounds or shot blocks. the fact that there is no turbo button is genius because it gives u more freedom and options attacking on offense. just having the touch sensative turbo on the stick alone can make this game better than the competition, being able to change speeds at will is incredible(think of the possibilities). by the way, live 10 had alot of signature moves, the sig shots were down to the T except for kobe's (i have to admit)i hope the devs fix his shot. live 10 had sig shots,sig fadeaways, sig moves like step backs (d.will is different from billups ect). sig lay ups and some sig dunks. it doesnt bother me for this year if is not 100% signature cause is going to be a great game but next year it cant be overlooked. i know next year EA's signature moves are going to be more flashy than the paparazzis in hollywood