Some new ideas

[mcbeth]

Hi,

i restarted playing this game with the 2022 version (last one before that was the 2018 version) and im happily suprissed how good the game is nowadays. It is a lot of fun to play even for someone like me, who never really played the game (i like sports in generall but when it comes to basketball i know the fundamentals but not more). Nevertheless i came across a couple of things i believe would increase the playing experience even more. This a only my thoughts of who the game can improve, so you are free to do with them what you want :-). Since im not a basketball guy i cant say a lot about the match engine, accurate ratings and so on., so my ideas mostly are about gameplay..

1. For me personally the buggest nuisance i have within this game is the difficulty to compare players. Its a lot of remembering stats, ratings or tendencies of one player, then locking at another player and try to remember them. I would suggest a real tab where you can compare players (could be in the players card or a shortcut where you find the players search, trade, etc...). It should open a screen, where on each side is one player (in total). You should have a drop down option to choose each player (maybe the first option is the club and the secont optiion is the players of the choosen club, like in the trade section. And then you should habe the possibility to compare different aspects by another option to choose (ratings, stats, players bio, players tenedencies like floor range, players personality....). I think that would be a great addition, since you compare the players all the time (how is my team contructed, which player do i put in the depth chart and where, who do i want to trade, which player i want to trade for....)

2. I think i read somewhere it isnt possible, but to get from the trade screen to the players card would be nice.

3. I struggle with the depth chart or more precise with which lineup is the right one. Since im not a basketball guy i dont know every player and what is the even bigger problem even if i know the player by name i dont necessarily know his strength and weaknesses (more a passer or a shooter, good or bad rebounder and so on). So what would help me imensly would be if there would some key stats when creating the depth chart. Honestly im not sure how this should look like myself (with not overloading the screen), but it would be great if i could see certain ratings while creating my depth charts. Maybe a solution would be another screen, where you have something like a columm. Left side and down is the minutes of the lineups and on top to the right you see the ratings like Inside shooting, outside shoooting, defense etc... And in the columm itself is the average rating of your lineup you have put in the depth chart. So you could see where your lineup is maybe missing sone defense or some scoring and so on...

4. I think the personality system is a good edition, but honestly it isnt very intuitiv. I played a little bit of time and still have no clue which personalities do mash and which one doesnt (part of that is me not really checking which personalities clash if i get a mail :-)). Since in the player card you see which players like each other, you should also see which players doenst. I mean in real life you would also the players whoform a friendship and the ones who dont like each other. So i think it would make the game more realistic to be hones (and would sill leave the task to think about if a new player would fit into your locker room).

5. And the last one which is maybe more a problem for players not so familiar with basketball (like me). I have difficulties figuering out the best playstyle for my team. This is mostly because i dont quite get it, what every playstyle demands. So what does it mean if i play a grind offensive style with lot of ball movement. Do i need players with good passing, because of the high amount of ball movement or is it more the other way around and they can have worse passing ratings, because we take our time with the attack and dont need extra good passes to create opportunities. This is only one example of manys i have problem with figuering out (even harder is it when it comes to which tendencies like floor range do i neeed for which offensive style). I have two ideas for this. First would be a rating of players fit for the different offensive playing styles, so you would see which players fit into which style (it should be a dynamic system with an actuel rating and a potential max rating. The potential max rating could be determind by the attributes of the players and since they can change the potential maximum can change to and the actual one should be getting better by playing actual games in this specific playing style). Since i think this system isnt so easy to implement, my second idea would be to higlight the ratings and tendencies which are important for the specific offensive playing style (so you could chosse one playing style and it shows you how important is which rating for the playing style (maybe in different categoreis from not important, good to have and very important). So for example if you play a post heavy offense it higlights your inside shotting and the time someones is in the post in the floor range chart as very important and so on...

So these are a few ideas. It would be nice to hear what others think about this ideas (and since im from germany my english may not be perfect, so please be kind when it comes to typing mistakes :-)).

[Gary Gorski]

First off welcome back and secondly your English is fine so please do not hesitate to make yourself more active around here. Let me address your suggestions for you.

1. This has been suggested by some others as well and I am looking into a way of doing this in a constructive and useful manner.

2. Yes I don't want to get into the technical reasons why I can't do it in the code but I can't. I try to have multiple drop downs there for the relevant information but if something in particular is missing I can work to add it.

3. I think I get what you are asking for here - I'm going to think this one over a bit. I don't think adding ratings here is going to work but maybe some kind of toggle that could indicate like what you were talking about if the lineup is poor defensively or something. One thing that the game sort of relies on is you getting to know the players you have on your roster. Each one is created with their own unique characteristics and I really hope the game draws you in enough to really want to know your players and then when you are doing things like setting the depth chart or considering players for trades you kind of know where your strengths and weaknesses lie.

4. The personality system does take some sweat equity as we say to learn. It does require you to play and learn what meshes over time. The reason the game lists friends is because to me that makes sense. Players hang out with their friends and stuff like that so as an observer you would know which guys that player seems to like pretty easily. The players they may clash with are a different story. Just because a player does not hang around another one does not mean they have a problem with them. Maybe they hate the guy, maybe he annoys them once in a while or maybe they're just different people and personalities and don't really care about each other one way or another. And even then on the personality side if a player dislikes another they still may not have a problem with them if things are going well overall like the team is winning a lot.

5. So yes, as you see when you select the Grind offensive strategy that the bar for ball movement becomes fully green, pace adjustment goes all the way down to red and everything else kind of balances out. This indicates that this style of offense is going to be very slow and there will be lots of passes and handling of the ball so you want players who are good ball handlers and passers because everyone is going to be touching the ball as it does not lend itself to any one particular type of attack other. Each strategy shows what will be important - so if you choose Post Focus you can see that post usage is fully green so this is going to emphasize players playing in the post and getting shots in the post so then when looking at individual players you want to make sure that your best offensive players are PFs/Cs that have high post floor range usage and higher post up shot % for ball actions because those players will be getting the ball more than normal in that offense. So if you have a team that does not have players like that you don't want to go with that kind of offensive strategy.

[mcbeth]

Thanks for your detailed answer.

1. Looking forward to your solution.
2. Thats unfortunate but cant be helped.
3. Same as point 1 looking forward to your solution.
4. Here we have different opinions. I personally was a soccer youth coach for some years and i think i had a pretty good take on who got along with whom and who didnt. But thats only my personal view. I get your point so it means the player has to put more emphasis on this part and will get the hang of it after some playing time (i think i personally have to start taking notes while playing to remeber what characters work wiht each other and which ones doesnt).
5. Okay i think the problem i have here comes more from not having played the game or not being this involved with the game of basketball itself. Is there a possibility to look up what exatcly every box of the offensive strategy means exactly and what ratings and tendencies cover them (i for example struggel which offense i should play, if i have a lot of guys who feel comfortable in the midrange)? I read somewhere you wanted to create some tutorial videos, so maybe this could be a theme for one of them...

One other thing came up to me, which i didnt get the hang of it till now. Thats the coach player relationship. I played one save with Orlando and one with the Spurs and both times my most important players (Franz Wagner and Murray) have a really bad realtionship with me the coach (10 %), while they are playing a lot of minutes. I dont quite get what influences player coach relationship, so i dont know what to do to improve the realtionship (i guess team realtionship is influenced by the different characters on the team and if they get along or not and organisation relationship is influenced by how succesfull you are)... Would be great if you could give me some hints here.

At the end i wish all people here a marry christmas (dont know when you wish merry christmas in america, in germany its on the 24 so if its different in america you take the wishes tomorrow :-)