What need to be done right on the next DDSPB

[Leonidas]

This posting is trying to help the developers of DDSPB for the next versions of the game. It's include my personal experience with DDSPB19 (nearly 1'000 seasons of single player) and with all former versions of DDSPB and TPB (maybe around 10'000 seasons of single player). All what I have to say is related just to the single player part of the game. Please excuse my mediocre english.

Beside some other things the game have two really big problems:


1. The game is way way way to easy.

I count endless championships, even if I follow some special rules to make it harder for me. Right now, I play a game just with players on rookie contracts and veterans on 1-year deals. No contract extensions for rookies, I let them go at RFA (or trade them before). 5 championships with Charlotte already. As I say: Way too easy. And no more fun, if it's to easy.

The biggest reason is, that the KI do not protect their players with rookies contracts. It looks like that the rookie potential is only a small factor in the calculation for the worth of the rookie. That need to be changed. KI should be defend all rookies with high upside. No one trade a rookie with a potential of 4! The best example is a rookie with 1.5/5.0 ... you can get them easily for a veteran player with 2.5/2.5. That should be changed! Factor in the player potential - as younger the player, as higher. A small factor for a 25-year old player with 2.0/3.0, but a big factor for a 20-year old player with 1.5/3.5.

Other reasons:
- KI does not protect their (good) FAs. You can get nearly every 3.5 player with a max offer.
- The draft is too much predictable. Draft high and win the game. Trade all picks below draft position 15 for next year picks, because at this position you get just useless rookies (not better as veterans for minimum contract). As a solution, there should be more draft busts, so the game is not so predictable. But all rookies should be have the chance to compete. So the potential for all rookies up to draft position 40 should be 2.5 (and all other rookies not lower than 2.0). As well, the potential for the top rookies can be higher. In exchange, lower the amount of rookies who reach their potential. The result (in overall player strenght) should be the same, but with these changes the game looks more than real-life. And a high potential prevent the KI from giving me their rookies for cheap.
- KI signed FAs for talent levels and not for production. One of the biggest mistakes of the game. In real-life no one care for talent, if the production is not there. So I let the KI sign the useless players with shootings stats like 0.4/0.2 and sign instead the players with shootings stats like 0.5/0.5. Or I let the KI sign Centers for their talent level of 4, but withs stats like a role-player (11/8) for max. contracts. Production and shootings stats should be a huge part of the worth of a player at FA and for trading. If not, the human player will have anytime a huge advantage.
- KI signed older players for too long contracts, so they are loosing their cap space to easily. As in this game all players older than 31 years loosing their talent level with every year, the KI should give them at best 3-year contracts without any salary raises, with a team option for the last year. For players up to talent level 2.5 no more than 2-year-contracts without any salary raise and with a team option for the second year.


2. The playoffs results are more based on luck than on strenght.

I have my experience, believe me. But what I saw on quite unrealistic playoff results, is just unbelievable. If this happend in the real world, the FBI will believe that the mafia "created" these results. Some examples? Multiple times teams come back from 0-3 to win the series (never happend in real world). A 2-0 lead means absolutely nothing (90% chance in real world). A very high rate of first round upsets (like 30-40%). At the end, you have a 1:1 chance to see a pairing like no. 3 seed vs. no. 6 seed (or something like this) in the finals. So, with your own super-team, the most dangerous playoff round is usually number 1. After that, it will become easier - and at the end, you will get a laughstock as finals opponent. I play usually without injuries, so this is not a factor here.

I must say, it looks simple like a big error in the game code. Something like the programmer want to write "factor of luck = 1.3" and mistakenly he wrote "13" instead of "1.3". In any case: The factor of luck and streaks (streaks is a thing of the regular season and should not appear in the playoffs) is way too high. So high, that the game is not more fun. All wins and championships are worthless, if you know that you are not compete against the best oppenents in the conference finals and the finals. Or your super-team loose against (really) mediocre teams in the first round with results like 1-4.

So, I want just and simple: Realistic playoffs results. The better team should win. The very much better team should win easily (and not going through a 4-3 against a team with a negative record). Please count in the difference in season wins! It's without any reason to loose against mediocre teams, when you own seasons records like 75-7. And on the other side: Team with a small difference on season records should tend to give each other a real fight - with results like 4-2 or 4-3, not 4-0. Any upset should come like a 3-4 or 2-4, but not as 0-4 or 1-4. Simple rule: As bigger the diffence of the season records is, the factor of luck should be smaller, the results more predictable.

If the game comes (with some changes) to a smaller factor of luck than in the real world, I see really no problem - because it's a game, and the game should any time reward the good GM. If the real world would be same as DDSPB is working now, no GM would create super-teams or go in luxury tax territory - because the chance to win the championship is not substantial higher than with the usual good team around 50 season-wins.


We can talk about many other things who can be better on DDSPB. But before these 2 big problems are not getting fixed, I see no point to invest more time in the game.