So I think after reading through many posts here and hours of testing I think I've found the best slider only solution for the lack of foul calls. I've actually seen a couple of flagrant fouls and a clear path foul using this philosophy with default rosters, as well as bonus situations for both teams often. I've seen a nice mix of contested makes, blocks, misses, and And 1s. Also since the defensive sliders are maxed I am seeing animations I haven't seen before like players being knocked over after shots and a lot of shooting fouls, like a lot of shooting fouls with dudes falling down and all. Here are the things I changed up from the slider sets I use:
1. Defensive sliders from
Driving Contact Frequency all the way down to
Jump Shot Defense Strength need to be maxed out to 100 for both teams. Still not sure if
Help Defense has any impact. Mine is at 100.
2. Man I'm here to tell y'all some of these sliders are really weird.
Shot Coverage Impact needs to be lowered because if you leave this around default or higher it is too difficult to make contested shots, but here is where it gets strange. At higher values contested shots are harder, but open shots are
much easier than default! I don't understand what 2K was doing here, but lowering this slider will make contested shots easier, but uncontested shots will be even easier than those, but not gimmes, if you all can follow me. This is what we want, not impossible contested shots and automatic open shots. Also the number you end up at will all depend on the slider set you use, skill level, shot meter on or off, use of real field goal percentage and what field goal percentages you are seeing in your testing. In my case anything from around 18-3 works well. I set the same number for myself and the CPU. If lowering this slider doesn't do enough to help the offense on both teams you then need to mess around with the
Shot Timing slider. Just be careful if you decide to raise the
Shot Success sliders because this will make all shots easier, including open shots.
3. There seems to be a connection with the
Defensive Awareness slider also. When it is at 0 I see fouls, but almost no shooting fouls. Just regular fouls and fouls on drives. When this is around default or higher I also see a ton of shooting fouls from all over the court mid range and I have had 3 point plays for and against me several times. I still need to play around with this more.
4. Under Tendencies
Go For On Ball Steals should be maxed out. All
Foul sliders maxed. Also as the USER we should be going for steals, especially in double team situations same as the CPU. This is part of the reason why they have a hard time getting to the bonus. Actively going for steals with this slider maxed out is nice risk vs reward, more steals and plus more fouls.
5. When the game starts and your first time on defense press right on the D pad and then right trigger until you see your defensive playstyle. Select
Play Physical. I believe this can be set up under coaching options in the pause menu but I just do this in game on defense all my coach crap is on Auto
6. Still testing the
Contest Shots slider to see how it synergizes with all of this. If yours is anywhere south or north of default your results may vary. Mine is close to default for now. I'm also not sure how
Body Up Sensitivity plays into this, but I don't think it does much at all. What I've noticed is when this is very low the ball handlers get knocked off the ball much too easy and lose the ball a lot. I have mine set to around 90. As mentioned I don't see a correlation with that slider and fouls.
I was wondering why EccentricMeat's sliders were giving me the best results when it came to foul calls. The reason why is his Defensive sliders are dog on close to being maxed out anyway. This gave me the base to jump into this further because I noticed how differently his sliders played to almost anyone else's I tried.
Credit to EccentricMeat here and ShadyMike from YouTube. I'm new to the game so their work lead me to find some of these things out.