[LorenzoDC]

A few responses to various other comments in this thread. My caveat is I play offline MyLeague, never PNO.

Yes, these are legacy issues.

Yes, this stuff happens offline, especially in transition. In transition players are routinely not aligned to play defense and leave opponents unguarded. Against the CPU, the CPU also gets boosts to ratings/speed/acceleration on fast breaks while user fast breaks get nerfed in the opposite direction so the CPU can catch up. The CPU can make full court passes to unguarded cutters to the hoop off made shots and the user can do no such thing. User passes on the break can't be received in stride.

I played 3 post patch 48 minute games yesterday and this stuff still happens. However, it may have been softened a bit for me because I edited every player in the league's Pull Up in Transition tendency rating to 0. The addition of tendency editing to the quick edit menu is extremely helpful in MyLeague.

I have yet to see evidence that defensive settings actually affect transition defense at all. Transition defensive logic seems to be a thing apart in terms of coding from half court logic/coding. However, if help settings do have some effect in transition, the effect is routinely overridden by transition logic coding.

I think 2k has a very difficult technical time of doing transition logic with the complexity of all player locations and ratings/threat variables to crunch together for each defender in the few seconds available during transition. I think as a design decision they don't compute those coding decisions for each player as they do in half court.

Instead I think they use a kind of 5 player shortcut of decision making and player alignment and defensive assignment to simplify things, and the result is a system of defense that often fails to replicate basketball, as in some of Sam's examples. I think that's the root of why player IQ, ratings/attributes and individual player settings logic don't apply in transition. That's my theory, anyway.

Offline defensive AI logic is somewhat better post patch 5 but still has issues. So far I think those issues have been reduced because I have yet to see players pushed across the floor by moving picks, and off ball defender movement seems slightly better moving around off ball picks (both user and CPU controlled). It seems a little more possible to navigate through and around screens as a user without getting magnet sucked to a standstill by contact. Teammates on defense seem to be making fewer (but still some) decisions that contradict your defensive settings for them.

I'm glad Sam is calling this out though, as he has a good platform for doing it.

If OG is telling Sam on twitter that he doesn't know what he's talking about, and is referring to 2K game play, then OG has no one, and I mean no one, to blame but himself or his bosses. The absolute silence from him and Czar to explain anything about what they put in the game this year beyond a couple of drive by streams is, to me, an inexcusable failure. OG always says "winners win." I don't see much winning in this silence.