Position Ability???

[elimack]

I've always believed the 2K sports engines' worked best when players in game abilities reflect those of their real life counterparts, and time and time again I've been proven correct.

Changes in player tendencies in the NBA title leads to smoother and more realistic interactions (no ratings adjustments required).

Given this knowledge I've been scouring sight after site trying to find the best measurement metrics available, only to find dead end after dead end. Adjusting tendencies increased realism, but didnt effect animations.

So against my normal reasoning I decided to, after reading some of the post by roster makers both here and 2K's forum, begin altering ratings. Which only lead to inconsistencies in on-field animations.

Finally after watching a CPU vs CPU game (both All-Star teams), hoping to find a difference in a 70,80,90 I realized every player regardless of rating was making the same plays. Just with different regularity, and occasionally smoother.

Urging me to find a the common factor(s) among. Insert fielding ability. Which for every player's primary position is maxed out (100). I have yet to formulate a scale, but in just lowering these to 50, 60, and 70 for the Yankees, I've witnessed better defensive rotations, quicker relays, and fielder converging on balls hit in-between positions.

It's my guess that players up to this point have been relying on the guy rated 100 to make the play 100% of the time regardless of ratings. I've also noticed varied ball off bat speed (more realistic), leading to better hit distribution (type wise).

And best of all NO SUCTION GLOVES!!! Sorry for the long post, I'm just a bit excited. I'll continue to test, just wanted to put this out there in case anyone else wanted to look into it.

[peigone]

Re: Position Ability???

So true, lowering many of the ratings by 50% or so improves the gameplay substantially. Also helps to smooth out the animations -- I honestly find it hard to look at this game sometimes, the animations are just so clunky. I've been doing all that since 2K5, that's one reason I never play franchise mode. There was a cool trick I discovered back with 2K8: you can lower fielding ratings to a point where the CPU will remove position players from the game in the late innings and sub in defensive replacements. It doesn't do that otherwise, everybody is rated too high and too similarly.

[rudyjuly2]

Re: Position Ability???

you can lower fielding ratings to a point where the CPU will remove position players from the game in the late innings and sub in defensive replacements. It doesn't do that otherwise, everybody is rated too high and too similarly.

Not true. I didn't touch the ratings and the cpu subbed in Mariano Rivera as a defensive sub in RF. No joke. I would see defensive replacements on occasion although I didn't always agree with them.

[peigone]

Re: Position Ability???

Not true. I didn't touch the ratings and the cpu subbed in Mariano Rivera as a defensive sub in RF.

Ha-ha! Yeah, I'm saying that to get this game to play smoothly, intelligently and realistically, a ratings overhaul and rebalancing is definitely required. People would be surprised at how much of a difference it makes to this series. That's the one thing 2K's games have over other devs' products: you can alter ratings and it makes an extremely noticable difference to the on-field gameplay.

[tvman]

Re: Position Ability???

Not true. I didn't touch the ratings and the cpu subbed in Mariano Rivera as a defensive sub in RF. No joke. I would see defensive replacements on occasion although I didn't always agree with them.

Probably because he has such a good arm.

[peigone]

Re: Position Ability???

Probably because he has such a good arm.

Probably because every pitcher in the game is rated 90+ in fielding. Hoover would be proud to design a vacuum that scooped up objects the way some of these players are capable of.

[Qbrick808]

Re: Position Ability???

I didn't touch the ratings and the cpu subbed in Mariano Rivera as a defensive sub in RF. No joke.

Well, I wouldn't expect a video game to reflect this, but you are dealing with a unique scenario here.

If you were to ask Joe Torre or Joe Girardi (or any of the players who have spent a lot of time on the Yanks since 1995) who the team's best defensive Centerfielder was, the answers would be a unanimous vote for Mariano Rivera.

It is well known in Yankee circles that he could have easily had a career as a Gold Glove Outfielder if he had not been such a solid pitching option (and if he had been able to develop into at least a mid-level hitter). Even at his ripe old age of 41 in 2011, watching him shag fly balls during batting practice was simply a marvel to see as he could do eye-popping things that no one else would even attempt, and always with such a sense of ease as if he was barely expending any effort.

As a relief pitcher he would never really get the credit for this next comment (in part because most people just don't get to see the evidence often enough), but Rivera is undoubtedly one of the best all around athletes in the history of Major League Baseball. He certainly has deserved multiple Gold Glove Awards for the Pitcher position during his career, but they haven't honored a reliever with that distinction in nearly 50 years.

Just consider that the guy has spent 22 years in the Yankees' system (minors, majors and post-season) -- appearing in 1241 games and throwing 1796 innings -- and during all of that he has yet to be charged with a total of ten errors.

He is the only active MLB Pitcher in the Top 10 on the All-Time list for Career Fielding Percentage at the position with a mark of .983 (thus ranking #1 in that category amongst current pitchers).

Only 15 MLB Pitchers have ever won multiple Gold Glove Awards, and more than half of them aren't even close to Rivera's fielding percentage. Jim Kaat won the award 16 times yet his career fielding percentage of .947 ranks just 240th in history. Bob Gibson won it 9 times with a mark of .949 (230th all-time). Mark Langston won it 7 times at only .941. The only two multiple Gold Glove winning pitchers who really measure up are Ron Guidry (5 awards, .981 pct, would rank 17th all-time but fails to qualify due to under 500 games as a fielder) and Mike Mussina (7 awards, .980 pct, 17th all-time); sort of odd that both happened to spend significant time with the same franchise where Rivera has been from day one. Greg Maddux holds the record with a pretty amazing and ridiculous 18 Gold Glove Awards during his 23-year career, but while his overall fielding percentage of .970 is solid, it's still just 68th on the all-time list.

It's pretty amazing stuff when you consider how good Rivera is at all of the elements of pitching aside from fielding. Even still, with all of the above being said, I don't think the computer mind of a video game should be putting Mariano in to play the outfield unless the team has run out of position players capable of handling the spot. Despite the fact that it makes some logical sense, it's simply not realistic; it's not as if Showalter, Torre or Girardi have used him that way even though I'm sure there were many times when they wanted to.